Cannabis Fuel

Lois J. Schiffer, Senior Vice President, Public Policy,...
Audubon Statement on House Vote to Open Arctic Refuge to Drilling
Updated: Thu, Aug 02 9:18 AM EDT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The House vote to open the Arctic Refuge is a disaster for the millions of migratory birds that call the Arctic Refuge home. The House vote to open the Arctic Refuge to oil drilling is a catastrophe for the environment and the future generations of Americans that deserve a last pristine wild place.

We urge the Senate to reverse this irresponsible step toward despoiling one of America's last great pristine wilderness areas. We urge the Senate to reject the piece of the Bush energy policy that sacrifices a national treasure -- the Arctic Refuge -- to the illusion of energy security.

We thank Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Nancy Johnson (R-CT) for their leadership in working to protect the Arctic Refuge.

MAKE YOUR OPINION COUNT - Click Here

Power of fossil fuel producers exposed - 7/30/1999 - ENN News
Just a few companies are responsible for most of the world's carbon pollution, according to a report released Thursday by a coalition of environmental groups.
Beyond Fossil Fuel: The Alternatives With the convergence of strict environmental controls, electricity deregulation, and high oil prices, renewable fuels are back in the limelight
NASA GISS: Tracking Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Fossil Fuel Burning


PLAN COLOMBIA TARGETS OIL, NOT DRUGS
James E. Garcia, PoliticoMagazine.com
The U.S. imports more oil from Latin America than from the Persian Gulf, so it makes sense that Plan Colombia is as much about oil and trade as it is about drugs.

The Real Reason for US Aid to Colombia

AGENT ORANGE ALL OVER AGAIN
James Ridgeway, Village Voice
The EPA is sitting on a report charging that U.S. spraying of potent herbicides in Colombia is causing serious environmental and health consequences while doing nothing to curb drug production.

DRUG WAR BRIEFS: U.S. AND THEM
Kevin Nelson, Alternet
This week in the drug war: Can't grow in Colombia?
Just move to Peru ... Vietnam II building in South America ...
NY Cops doled out drugs to addicts ... Canada vs. United States.

Rolling Stone: America's War on Drugs
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread10471.shtml

Fear in the Fields
The Village Idiots

AUDUBON Oil Drilling
A Leap of Faith
by Chris Chang

Colombia's indigenous u'wa people, an ancient tribal group with about 5,000 members, have threatened to commit mass suicide if an exploratory oil well is drilled on land they consider sacred. Remarkably, the suicide would be an act with precedent. When Spanish conquistadores tried to enslave the tribe in the 17th century, scores of U'wa walked off the top of a 1,400-foot precipice now known as the Cliff of Glory.

If the Occidental Petroleum well produces oil, the project will expand across 260,000 acres of cloudforest and wetlands with a network of pipelines and access roads. Occidental, backed by Colombia's minister of the environment, does not recognize the targeted area as U'wa territory. "Legally, the land does not belong to them," says a company spokesperson. The U'wa are currently working with lawyers, human rights organizations, and environmental groups in both Colombia and the United States in an effort to have Occidental's permit, granted by the environment minister last September, revoked. According to one tribal elder, "Exploiting the heart of the world would provoke the collapse of our culture and the death of the U'wa."

Furthermore, oil production provides targets of sabotage for the powerful guerrilla groups that prowl the Colombian andscape. Consider Occidental's Cano Limon pipeline, on the northern edge of U'wa territory. Since 1986 the guerillas have bombed it more than 600 times. The attacks have resulted in 1.7 million barrels of crude oil being spilled liberally along the pipeline's 480-mile length. The Colombian Institute of Natural Resources summed up the situation: "Because of the polluting effluents from Cano Limon, the receiving rivers and lakes are no longer fit for consumption."

The U'wa rotate crops, let their fields lie fallow to allow the replenishment of native plant and animal species, and avoid cutting down larger trees. The unspoiled parts of the region have some of the greatest biodiversity anywhere; resident species include toucans, anacondas, jaguars, and spectacled bears.

The Uwa's land-use techniques are so discreet they can't even be detected by satellite photography taken by the U.S. government, which is currently considering $1.5 billion in military aid to Colombia. Much of that will probably go to quelling guerilla activity. But that, as Loren Sullivan of the Rainforest Action Network notes, "would be overpowering violence with violence." And it might also pave the way for the unfathomable: an U'wa act of cultural genocide.
Todd Wilkinson

Audubon Society: Legalize It!
Hemp History in Audubon
AS: Field Notes on Woody
A Brief Summary of the Uses of Hemp
Audubon: High on Hemp: Ditchweed Digs In
Popular Mechanics 1938
or
http://www.jackherer.com
Fibre Plants-Hemp Childrens Encyclopedia 1909;pp.321-324
Untied States of Anemica

HempCar visits Watertown, So. Dak. on behalf of SoDakHEMP

The Hemp Car, a promotional idea of a couple working for the legalization of industrial hemp production in the U.S., made a two-hour stop in Watertown (SD) Friday (Aug. 3, 2001).

Virginia couple works for hemp legalization
by Terry O'Keefe, staff writer

Kellie and Grayson Sigler, a Virginia couple who work with microfarming, green house design and alternative agriculture and environmental issues, have been on the road for a month in the 1983 Mercedes Benz station wagon, crossing the country and into Canada powered by pure hemp oil.

The stop at the Watertown Mall was sponsored by the S.D. Industrial Hemp Council whose main spokesman, Bob Newland of Hermosa, was on hand asking people who stopped to sign a petition putting the issue of legalizing industrial hemp on the state ballot in 2002.

Festooned with a variety of hemp-related slogans and sponsor advertising, the car quickly began drawing onlookers, some just curious, others there to show their support for the industrial hemp movement.

The Siglers, who came up with the idea for Hemp Car about two years ago and worked to make it a viable automobile, left on what will eventually be a 12,000-mile trip July 4 from Washington, D.C. By the time they reached Watertown, they had already traveled about 4,000 miles, Grayson Sigler told the Public Opinion.

He said they have had no mechanical problems with the car and have set up a series of drop points for more fuel along the way.

"We had to put on a new set of tires so far," he said. "We're carrying about 1,500 pounds."

He said they have 12 drop points for fuel set up along the way and carry five, 11-gallon containers of fuel from each point. Averaging about 27 miles per gallon, he said they can travel about 1,200 between fuel stops.

"We have drawn some good crowds along the way," he said of the stops along the first 4,000 miles of the journey.

So far, those stops have included festivals, county fairs and mall parking lots. At each, he said, if nothing else they are getting media attention and spreading the word about the benefits of hemp oil as a renewable source of energy and an alternative fuel.

"I've been concerned with the environment for a number of years," Grayson, 33, said. "I was looking at alternative fuels to power my car and discovered hemp was the best idea of alternative fuels."

Newland's group has been circulating petitions to get the issue of legalizing industrial hemp before state voters and paid a sponsorship fee to have the Hemp Car stop in Watertown. Grayson Sigler said that industrial hemp production is legal in the state of Virginia, but that means little with the federal ban on the plant still in place.

Banned from production in the 1930s, at the same its relative marijuana was outlawed, hemp has been imported for a number of uses in the last few decades by various manufacturers. Canada lifted its ban on the crop a few years ago and growers in that country are slowly trying to build production and marketing tools for the crop.

Those opposed to its legalization have pointed to poor existing markets and high start-up costs for the new industry to get established in the United States as a couple of reasons growing industrial hemp won't work here. Law enforcement officials worry that hemp would be hard to distinguish from illegal marijuana plants, promoting more growing of marijuana.

Hemp contains a very small amount of THC, the chemical content which gives marijuana smokers their drug high and Canadian officials said they have worked to develop new strains of hemp that have THC content of less than 0.1 percent. Marijuana typically contains at least five percent THC.

Promoters of industrial hemp in South Dakota say its legalization would give the state's farmers a foot in the door of a new industry and provide more value-added ag opportunities. Opponents, including S.D. Ag Secretary Larry Gabriel, question the viability and potential demand for hemp as a manufacturing component.

"The Hemp Car" a 1983 Mercedes Benz powered by pure hemp oil, made a stop in Watertown Friday to help promote the legalization of industrial hemp as an agricultural product. (Photo by Terry O'Keefe)

Pics
Hemp for Victory
South Dakota Hemp

(USDA film, Hemp for Victory, 1942; U. of KY Agricultural Ext. Service Leaflet 25, March 1943; Galbraith, Gatewood, Kentucky Marijuana Feasibility Study, 1977.)

The Battle of Bulletin 404
or
How World War I Cost Us Hemp & the Forests

The Setting

In 1917, the world was battling World War I. In this country, industrialists, just beset with the minimum wage and graduated income, tax, were sent into a tailspin. Progressive ideals were lost as the United States took its place on the world stage in the struggle for commercial supremacy. Is is against this backdrop that the first 20th Century hemp drama was played.

The Players

The story begins in 1916, soon after the release of USDA Bulletin 404. Near San Diego, California, a 50-year-old German immigrant named George Schlichten had been working on a simple yet brilliant invention. Schlichten had spent 18 years and $400,000 on the decorticator, a machine that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, leaving the pulp behind. To build it, he had developed an encyclopedic knowledge of fibers and paper making. His desire was to stop the felling of forests for paper, which he believed to be a crime. His native Germany was well advanced in forestry and Schlichten knew that destroying forests meant destroying needed watersheds.

Henry Timken, a wealthy industrialst and investor of the roller bearing, got wind of Schlichten's invention and went to meet the inventor in February of 1917. Timken saw the decorticator a a revolutionary discovery that would improve conditions for mankind. Timken offered Schlichten the chance to grow 100 acres of hemp on his ranch in the fertile farmlands of Imperial Valley, California, just east of San Diego, so that Schlichten could test his invention.

Shortly thereafter, Timken met with the newspaper giant E.W. Scripps, and his long-time associate Milton McRae, at Miramar, Scripp's home in San Diego. Scripps, then 63, had accumulated the largest chain of newspapers in the country. Timken hoped to interest Scripps in making newsprint from hemphurds.

Turn-of-the-century newspaper barons needed huge amounts of paper to deliver their swelling circulations. Nearly 30% of the four million tons of paper manufactured in 1909 was newsprint; by 1914 the circulation of daily newspapers had increased by 17% over 1909 figures to over 28 million copies.1 By 1917, the price of newsprint was rapidly rising, and Mcae, who had been investigating owning a paper mill since 1904,2 was concerned.

Sowing the Seeds

In May, after further meetings with Timkin, Scripps asked McRae to investigate the possibility of using the decorticator in the manufacture of newsprint.

McRae quickly became excited about the plan. He called the decorticator "a great invention. . . [which] will not only render great service to this country, but it will be very profitable financially. . . [it] may revolutionize existing conditions." On August 3, as harvest time neared, a meeting was arranged between Schlichten, McRae, and newspaper manager Ed Chase.

Without Schlichten's knowledge, McRe had his secretary record the three-hour meeting stenographically. The resulting document, the only known record of Schlichten's voluminous knowledge found to date, is reprinted fully in Appendix I.

Schlichten had thoroughly studied many kinds of plants used for paper, among them corn, cotton, yucca, and Espana bacata. Hemp, it seemed, was his favorite:

"The hemp hurd is a practical success and will make paper of a higher grade than ordinary news stock," he stated.

His hemp paper was even better than that produced for USDA Bulletin 404, he claimed, because the decorticator eliminated the retting process, leaving behind short fibers and a natural glue that held the paper together.

At 1917 levels of hemp production Schlichten anticipated making 50,000 tons of paper yearly at a retail price of $25 a ton. This was less than 50 percent of the price of newsprint at the time! And every acre of hemp turned to paper, Schlichten added, would preserve five acres of forest.

McRae was very impressed by Schlichten. The man who dined with presidents and captains of industry wrote to Timken, "I want to say without equivocation that Mr. Schlichten impressed me as being a man of great intellectuality and ability; and so far as I can see, he has created and constructed a wonderful machine." He assigned Chase to spend as much time as he could with Schlichten and prepare a report.

Harvest Time

By August, after only three months of growth, Timken's hemp crop had grown to its full height - 14 feet! - and he was highly optimistic about its prospects. He hoped to travel to California to watch the crop being decorticated, seeing himself as a benefactor to mankind who would enable people to work shorter hours and have more time for "spiritual development."

Scripps, on the other hand, was not in an optimistic frame of mind. He had lost faith in a government that he believed was leading the country to financial ruin because of the war, and that would take 40 percent of his profits in income tax. In an August 14 letter to his sister, Ellen, he said: "When Mr. McRae was talking to me about the increase in the price of white paper that was pending, I told him I was just fool enough not to be worried about a thing of that kind." The price of paper was expected to rise 50 percent, costing Scripps his entire year's profit of $1,125,000! Rather than develop a new technology, he took the easy way out: the Penny Press Lord simply planned to raise the price of his papers from one cent to two cents.

The Demise

On August 28, Ed Chase sent his full report to Scripps and McRae. The younger man also was taken with the process: "I have seen a wonderful, yet simple, invention. I believe it will revolutionize many of the processes of feeding, clothing, and supplying other wants of mankind.

Chase witnessed the decorticator produce seven tons of hemp hurds in two days. At full production, Schlichten anticipated each machine would produce five tons per day. Chase figured hemp could easily supply Scripps' West Coast newspapers, with leftover pulp for side businesses. He estimated the newsprint would cost between $25 and $35 per ton, and proposed asking an East Coast paper mill to experiment for them.

McRae, however, seems to have gotten the message that his boss was no longer very interested in making paper from hemp. His response to Chase's report is cautious: "Much will be determined as to the practicability by the cost of transportation, manufacture, etc., etc., which we cannot ascertain without due investigation." Perhaps when his ideals met with the hard work of developing them, the semi-retired McRae backed off.

By September, Timken's crop was producing one ton of fiber and four tons of hurds per acre, and he was trying to interest Scrips in opening a paper mill in San Diego. McRae and Chase travelled to Cleveland and spent to hours convincing Timken that, while hemp hurds were usable for other types of paper, they could not be made into newsprint cheaply enough. Perhaps the eastern mill at which they experimented wasn't encouraging - after all, it was set up to make wood pulp paper.

By this time, Timken, too, was hurt by the wartime economy. He expected to pay 54 percent income tax and was trying to borrow $2 million at 10 percent interest to retool for war machines. The man who a few weeks earlier could not wait to get to California no longer expected to go west at all that winter. He told McRae, "I think I will be too damn busy in this section of the country looking after business."

The decorticator resurfaced in the 1930s, when it was touted as the maching that would make hemp a "Billion Dollar Crop" in articles in Mechanical Engeneering and Popular Mechanics.* (Until the 1993 edition of The Emperor, the decorticator was believed to be a new discovery at that time.) Once again, the burgeoning hemp industry was halted, this time by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.

Ellen Komp A fuller account of the story3 may be found in the Appendix.

Footnotes:

1. World Almanac, 1914, p. 225; 1917.
2. Forty Years in Newspaperdom, Milton McRae, 1924 Brentano's NY
3. Scripps Archives, University of Ohio, Athens, and Ellen Browing Scripps Archives, Denison Library, Claremont College, Claremont, California

Why Not Use Hemp to Reverse the Greenhouse Effect & Save the World?

In early, 1989, Jack Herer and Maria Farrow put this question to Steve Rawlings, the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Department of Agruculture (who was in charge of reversing the Greenhouse Effect), at the USDA world research facility in Beltsville, Maryland.

First, we introduced ourselves and told him we were writing for Green political party newspapers. Then we asked Rawlings, "If you could have any choice, what would be the ideal way to stop or reverse the Greenhouse Effect?"

He said, "Stop cutting down trees and stop using fossil fuels."

"Well, why don't we?"

"There's no viable substitute for wood for paper, or for fossil fuels."

"Why don't we use an annual plant for paper and for fossil fuels?"

"Well, that would be ideal," he agreed. "Unfortunately, there is nothing you can use that could produce enough materials."

"Well, what would you say if there was such a plant that could substitute for all wood pulp paper, all fossil fuels, would make kmost of our fibers naturally, make everything from dynamite to plastic, grows in all 50 states and that one acre of it would replace 4.1 acres of trees, and that if you used about 6 percent of the U.S. land to raise it as an energy crop - even on our marginal lands, this plant would produce all 75 quadrillion billion BTUs needed to run America each year? Would that help save the planet?

"That would be ideal. But there is no such plant."

"We think there is."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Hemp."

"Hemp! he mused for a moment. "I never would have thought of it. . . You know, I think you're right. Hemp could be the plant that could do it. Wow! That's a great idea!"

We were excited as we outlined this information and delineated the potential of hemp for paper, fiber, fuel, food, paint, etc., and how it could be applied to balance the world's ecosystems and restore the atomosphere's oxygen balance with almost no disruption of the standard of living to which most Americans have become accustomed.

In essence, Rawlings agreed that our information was probably correct and could very well work.

He said, "It's a wonderful idea, and I think it might work. But, of course, you can't use it."

"You're kidding!" we responded. "Why not?"

"Well, Mr. Herer, did you know that hemp is also marijuana?"

"Yes, of course I know, I've been writing about it for about 40 hours a week for the past 17 years."

"Well, you know marijuana's illegal, don't you? You can't use it."

"Not even to save the world?"

"No. It's illegal", he sternly informed me. "You cannot use something illegal."

"Not even to save the world?" we asked, stunned.

"No, not even to save the world. It's illegal. You can't use it. Period."

"Don't get me wrong. It's a great idea," he went on, "but they'll never let you do it."

"Why don't you go ahead and tell the Secretary of Agriculture that a crazy man from California gave you documentation that showed hemp might be able to save the planet and that your first reaction is that he might be right and it needs some serious study. What would he say?"

"Well, I don't think I'd be here very long after I did that. After all, I'm an officer of the government."

"Well, why not call up the information on your computer at your own USDA library. That's where we got the information in the first place."

He said, "I can't sign out that information."

"Well, why not? We did."

"Mr. Herer, you're a citizen. You can sign out for anything you want. But I am an officer of the Department of Agriculture. Someone's going to want to know why I want all this information. And then I'll be gone.

Finally, we agreed to send him all the information we got from the USDA library, if he would just look at it.

He said he would, but when we called back a month later, he said that he still had not opened the box that we sent him and that he would be sending it back to us unopened because he did not want to be responsible for the information, now that the Bush Administration was replacing him with its own man.

We asked him if he would pass on the information to his successor, and he replied, "Absolutely not."

In May, 1989, we had virtually the same conversation and result with his cohort, Dr. Gary Evans of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Science, the man in charge of stopping the global warming trend.

In the end, he said, "If you really want to save the planet with hemp, then you [hemp/marijuana activists] would find a way to grow it without the narcotic (sic) top - and then you can use it."

This is the kind of frightened (and frightening) irresponsibility we're up against in our government.

AEC, DOE, NRC, Nuclear Murderers
Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
The Toxic Alternative to Natural Fiber
The Elkhorn Manifesto What do Hemp and Hitler have in common? World War II, that's what.
CANNABIS AND HEMP The Untold Story
The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Why they call it dope!
PREJUDICE: CANNABIS AND JIM CROW LAWS
THE OIL WAR OF 1872
Bush, Quayle, Lilly Pharmaceutical Sell Out
The Corporations that own our media
Industrial Hemp webring
Construction Technologies
Fuel & Fiber
Organization: BioComposite Solutions
ContactPerson: Erwin Lloyd
Street: 2408 Kentucky Street
City: Bellingham
State: Washington
Zip: 98226-3998
Country: US
Tel: 360-734-4240
Fax: 530-618-6984
E-Mail: biocomp@home.com
Description: Research, development, and consulting of hemp and other bio-based particleboard, MDF, OSB, and other building and insulation materials. Decortication consulting and fiber and core technology development.

Products: Building materials, insulation

Hemptech Links
Hemp Industries Association
Hemp FAQ's

FAQ#1: What are the benefits of hemp seeds and hemp oil for food?
For informative answers to this question, see: Hemp Seed, The Royal Grain, by Chris Bennett
Traditional Uses of Culinary Hemp Seed by Dr. Alexander Sumach
Centuries of Safe Consumption of Hemp Foods by Cynthia Thielen
Essential Fatty Acids Can Affect Your Baby's Intelligence! by Hempola, Inc.
Nutritional Analysis of Hempseed and Hempseed Oil by The Ohio Hempery
Nutritional Analysis of HempNut Hulled Hempseed by Richard Rose

FAQ#2: How is industrial hemp used?
For answers to this question, see: Basic Uses of Industrial Hemp: Food, Fuel, Fiber
by Mari Kane

Basic Uses of Hemp
Hemp Facts
FoM's Hemp Links
DdC Hemp Links
Jack's Hemp Links
Economics: Energy, Environment and Commerce
A Brief Summary of the Uses of Hemp
Popular Mechanics 1938
or
Cybrary Copy
Fibre Plants-Hemp Childrens Encyclopedia 1909;pp.321-324
Hemp Car

OPEC Fossil Fuels vs American Homegrown Biomass

Welcome