ResistGlobalwarming.org calls on academics and members of Congress to engage in a thorough and comprehensive manner in global drug control programmes and their innumerable unintended consequences. If well-intentioned laws and policies create incentives that contribute to global climate change, which is likely to be catastrophic, these laws and policies must be carefully considered. If these laws and policies are not effective, they should be repealed. If these laws and policies are effective, the benefits they provide must be weighed against the negative environmental impacts they cause. If the benefits that laws and policies create are not greater than the environmental disaster to which they contribute, these laws and policies must be repealed. The normalization of the marijuana trade is indeed consistent with the platform on which Joe Biden ran in 2020, who promised to “decriminalize marijuana use and reprogram it through action by the federal executive.” But Biden`s White House has yet to show boldness or progressive action regarding cannabis — instead, it has made headlines for ousting skilled administrative staff from the West Wing due to past marijuana use. “President Biden is a longtime drug warrior, and he doesn`t seem inclined to get rid of that legacy,” Linnekin said. “Despite the government`s rhetoric on climate change, this is an area where they just don`t put their money where they say it.” When it comes to the illegal market, it is difficult to accurately assess energy and climate impacts. However, Quinn says these effects could potentially get worse.
On the other side of the Atlantic, in the United Kingdom, in some cases, large illegal producers have been linked to power outages. What domestic cannabis production represents is an as yet unquantified global source of greenhouse gas emissions. As with water use, this is an additive problem. A recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that time is running out quickly to reduce the worst effects of climate change. Reducing emissions from a fast-growing legal cannabis industry while limiting illegal production could help achieve this goal – although it is known exactly to what extent. If the cocaine suppression programme has been successful in reducing drug-related deaths, petty criminal offences and drug-related violence, then the environmental consequences of the destruction of the rainforest may be an appropriate cost-benefit compromise. This assumes that the costs of destroying the rainforest are calculated. This “green rush” is a boon for economies.
In the United States, legal cannabis is expected to generate up to $43 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, the U.S. has continued to fuel much of the $65 billion in demand in 2020. With legalization, analyzing environmental impacts becomes easier than tracking the effects of illegal trade. Legalization would also reduce the environmental impact of smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border, Gloudeman says, “Cartels regularly use generators, diesel storage tanks and animal poison to maintain their stocks when the border area is surrounded by more than 4 million acres of sensitive federal wilderness.” In addition, legalizing the pot would literally shift its production outdoors, meaning producers would no longer have to spend huge energy costs to light their illegal indoor growers with artificial light. This means that the energy consumption and carbon footprint of marijuana growers would decrease significantly, as the light that plants need for photosynthesis could be provided more naturally by the sun. Another ecological benefit of marijuana legalization would be an end to the destructive eradication efforts used by law enforcement agencies at dismantling sites, where crops and the land in which they are rooted are sometimes exposed to aggressive chemical herbicides for accelerated removal. The legalization of pot in the United States would also likely open the door to the legal production of hemp, a variety of the same cannabis plant that contains much lower amounts of thc, a psychoactive drug. Proponents say hemp could meet an ever-increasing percentage of our national fiber and fuel needs. Cannabis, the plant from which marijuana and hemp are derived, grows quickly without the need for excessive amounts of fertilizer or pesticides (it`s a “weed, after all”) and absorbs carbon dioxide like any plant involved in photosynthesis. Hemp-derived fibers and fuels would be carbon neutral and, as such, would not contribute to global warming – and could actually help mitigate rising temperatures by replacing chemically intensive crops like cotton and imported fossil fuels like oil and gas.
Of course, it could be argued that it would be better for the environment to stop growing cannabis altogether. “But let`s be honest: it will never happen,” Gloudeman says. With that in mind, the next best bet is to make it legal. “CONTACTS: Change.org, www.change.org; Drug Policy Alliance, www.drugpolicy.org. For the United States, our drug policy has failed as a policy to promote drug control, public health and public safety. Would the drug problem in the United States be worse if we stopped destroying the existing coca fields in the Amazon? Would coca deforestation in the Amazon stop if we stopped our coca eradication? Both sides of the cannabis industry – legal and illegal markets – are responsible for environmental damage to varying degrees, experts say, which could add to the pressure on Earth`s “safe operating space.” Concerns include the impact on freshwater supplies, threats to biodiversity, changes in land use and potentially huge CO2 emissions that contribute to worsening climate change.
