MORE OF AUSTRALIA LIKELY TO BECOME HOT DESERT : Melbourne Indymedia

Much of Australia is hot desert. Only 4% of the country is good arable land.
http://www.vicnet.net.au/~aespop/aespmappage.htm

A study has claimed that average annual temperature will rise in Australia by up to six degrees centigrade by 2070. A BBC article by Philip Mercer, 2 Jan, 2004, “Australian ‘facing hotter future’, paints a gruesome picture of unbearably high temperatures, debilitating tropical diseases, raging bushfires, and increasingly sustained droughts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3361991.stm

The ABC program, Catalyst, recently described how the Antarctic vortex of winds is contracting and causing rainfall we have relied upon on the Southern coasts since Captain Cook arrived to fall out to sea.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s948858.htm

In the midst of this the every State government, except the Carr government is dancing to the tune of a property development lobby that wants Australia to have a population of over fifty million, just so that their friends in the banks who rake in interest on mortgage lending, and their friends in forestry and mining, who supply the building materials industries, and the corporations that own or manage water and power, can sell it to more people at a higher rate for smaller units.

The selfishness of the pro-growth lobby – which includes the Labor Party and the Liberal party - is only outdone by its scientific stupidity.

Much of Australia is hot desert. Only 4% of the country is good arable land.
http://www.vicnet.net.au/~aespop/aespmappage.htm

Whilst the puppets of the rich, Bracks and Thwaites, do their job of making Victorians feel guilty about the water, power and living space we use, their policies are increasing the overall demand for these things.

Is this democracy?
No, it is plutocracy. Australia is ruled by the corporate sector.
You won’t read this in the mainstream press because it is the mouthpiece of the corporate sector: the bankers, the pipes, paper and building material merchants, the corporate irrigator lobby, and the housing and land production industry. Just take a look at the proportion of the Age that is comprised of real estate advertising and their property dot com http://www.domaine.com.au. Or look at the Australian’s: http://www.realestate.com.au. Or look at the lifestyle programs on the commercial television stations. Even the ABC promotes APOP conferences. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/brkfast/stories/s994078.htm. The Australian Population Institute (APOP)is a propaganda wing for property developers!

Why don’t the Greens, the Democrats, the ACF and WWF come out fighting for the rest of us? Sadly, maybe they too have all come to depend on the same corporatised media approval and have easily been cowed by mainstream manipulation of wedge politics.

They don’t even criticise development these days, let alone the foolhardiness of increasing our population. They need help!

For real ecology try http://www.population.org.au
For real political policies, try http://www.republicans.org.au

Respect yourselves and make your representatives respect you!

Queenie Alexander

queenie, i commented in your last article that what you were saying sounded awfully reminiscant of the politics of one nation. you've yet to reply.
why in your critique do you make no mention of levels of consumption?
why do you make no critique of the current destructive forms of housing and make no mention of the possibility of building sustainable housing?
it's interesting that you mention captain cook as a reference and that you completly leave out any mention of the fact that this land was stolen in the first place. under what basis of sovereignty do you claim the right to exclude other people when you are a beneficiary of it's theft?
why do you sound like chicken little?

and yes the mainstream environment groups are pussy cats but you'll probably find they support your position.
the only environment group that doesn't is friends of the earth.
have a read.
http://www.foe.org.au/nc/nc_enviro_pop.htm

your arguments are instrinsicly racist and bob carr is hardly going to save you. look at the amount of polution industry in NSW puts out. look how much is consumed.
population is just one aspect of a bigger picture relating to environmental destruction and it involves having a much sophisticated analysis of capitalism that you seem to be able to come up with.

Thanks OJ for the excellent FOE link. Last week I also read though some of the Sustainable Population Australia pages (which Queenie links to) vs. NoBorder / xborder pages, without much resolution between the issues of human rights and ecological sustainability, but the FOE work seems to be a reasonable effort in that direction.

It's really freakin difficult to navigate this issue, and I'd like to see the people that post here help work some directions out. In the conflict here I feel drawn to both sides.

I see the no-borders side as having a higher moral ground from certain perspectives, but the nationalist population arguments draw on more ecological arguments - they just don't necessarily address the ways we can limit our impact enough.

This was the only article I found in my search which explicitly put forward some arguments for no-borders was in New Internationalist, which I found lacking from an environmental perspective:

http://www.newint.org/issue350/sense.htm

The SPA material to it's credit, rejects any immigration policy based on race, address the refugees issue (saying there is room for greater numbers), and promotes views on population by the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody commision on their website, which also favour zero population growth. ( http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aespop/aespkoori.htm )

There might be something intrinsically self protective of affluence in the views of SPA, although I don't think it is especially racist.
http://www.population.org.au/pressrm/pub/SPA_Population_Policy.pdf

But it may be all to easy for the humanitarian issues to be de-emphasised in this debate when ecological arguments superficially support self-serving or racist policies. I think the issues, and potential pitfalls of this issue were well summed in this critisism of Tim Flannery (an SPA supporter) by Dan Cass on the FOE pages: http://www.foe.org.au/nc/nc_ep_flannery.htm

Tim Flannery of course was making an important point. He just chose a problematic political moment, and was neglignent in not addressing australian's own over-consumption.

Something that I haven't seen noted is that while the huge consumption of our population makes us unsustainable, it is over-consumption of fossil fuels (as inefficient as that has been) which has allowed the planet to support such a large number of humans - a population which has grown 50% in my 29 years from ~4billion to 6+.

We can become more efficient and less poluting - especially in Aus and the minority world - but most informed views I've come across suggest that Earth is already exceding it's carrying capacity of humans, even if we were living with minimum impact.

Population 'control' will most likely be forced apon us as not enough food can be produced to feed the planet. As topsoils blow away and salinate, polution gets ever worse, and oil production begins its decline(!) we will not be able to support the the population of this planet and that's something we will likely see begin its disasterous effects within the next decade (we may be seeing it already with world grain stores at dangerous lows after 3 bad years
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2003-September/010048.html ).

The issue is unavoidable, and the conflicts that arise from it are like a political car crash which is difficult to look away from. The only satisfactory politics that arise from it will be well developed, but will nevertheless always be problematic at some level.

"She makes jewellery out of car crashes".

Dear OJ,

You write:

O.J. "why does what your saying sound awfully familiar?
by oj Sunday January 04, 2004 at 10:21 AM"

Q.A. Let's see, I mentioned population growth, immigration, greenhouse, the building industry, banks, property developers, building materials industries ... and this makes me like Pauline Hanson, does it? Well, I guess I had better not mention any of those things again, eh? It’s lucky you don’t have any real authority. People seek asylum here to get away from regimes where everything you say may be twisted against you.

queenie, i commented in your last article that what you were saying sounded awfully reminiscant of the politics of one nation. you've yet to reply.
why in your critique do you make no mention of levels of consumption?"

O.J. I didn't respond to your comments because I'm not posting just to argue points. Much of my work involves writing about energy consumption and I have done a lot of research comparing different countries’ profiles on petroleum resource consumption and costing the EROEI of alternative energies. I have written one thesis and one book on the subject and am just starting another. I really do care about the environment – but about the whole ecology, not just us humans. I don't think you do. Or, if you do, you are so ideologically hidebound that you attack people you should realize are fighting the same fight as you.

Some answers, however:

Plenty of people are calling for lower consumption but consumption is going up all the time. You can take it that I AM calling for lower consumption, but I don't see any hope of any response. The growth economy, which relies on consumption, also relies on population growth. The government and the pipe merchants and the property developers are ALL “calling” for lower consumption, but they are actually beating consumption UPWARDS. But mostly they are calling for higher population growth. Now, doesn’t that tell you something about their priorities?

You need to look at your ideology very hard and compare it to reality.

I believe that the consumer society is FED by high population. It is certainly your professed enemies who are pushing for it.

Why don't you ever attack them?

By attacking me you are assisting your enemies.

I actually care about wilderness, wildlife, solitude, sanctuary. I don't see Friends of the Earth doing much or anything to fight for these. Apart from some nice rhetoric. And FOE’s website author is actually so dangerously deluded that it is attacking Tim Flannery, who is a champion of wildlife, a champion of indigenous cultures and a brilliant ecologist who has demonstrated just WHY we cannot keep pillaging this land. If you think he is your enemy, then who on earth do you think is your friend? Richard Pratt???? Steve Vizard ?

I also know that social justice deteriorates with a high population - with a communist, socialist or capitalist government. Look at any country with a big population and you will see political strife and social division grow as population grows. Unless of course you don’t want to see it because it interferes with your convictions, however mistaken they may be.

No housing is sustainable when there are too many people. Our footprint is growing all the time. Fighting Madison Ave is like fighting the wind. I'm not about to sit on my hands while the corporate moguls and their friends in politics grow our population and brainwash us all to consume more. The way to defeat the corporate push for high consumption is to defeat their push for a big local market - vis, lots of consumers.

O.J. "why do you make no critique of the current destructive forms of housing and make no mention of the possibility of building sustainable housing?"

Q.A. Well, because the main problem is land speculation, not the styles of brick and mortar. Because the planners run VCAT and the government and they are the ones who create the lousy standards. And because this is a short article. Because the problem is immediate. Because the housing estate merchants are churning out pseudo-Georgian sawdust and plastic dollhouses that have lousy insulation and are facing the wrong way in massive factories and they aren’t about to listen to me. And because the pathetic idiots who are driven further and further out into old farmland actually LIKE what they are buying, but they don’t like the prices. So I am telling them why the prices are so high. Because they might want to know that. It is the cost of the LAND, not the cost of the houses that is ruining their lives. No-one else is going to tell these people. Certainly not Friends of the Earth, it would seem, if it would involve blowing the whistle on the immigration boosting industry.

Why is this? Is it because you guys have got yourselves wedged into a corner by imagining that to defend asylum seekers you have to attack anyone who doesn’t want a big population? Is it because you were all brainwashed as children by priests and nuns? Or is it that you are hiding behind the asylum seeker issue because you are really working for the Ford Foundation or the New America foundation or the Right to Lifers or the Catholics or the ALP or the Libs or Visy or the Age or the Australian or Oz Pop or APop or the Lavoisier Inst or….? Your logic is so convoluted I wouldn’t be surprised.

O.J. "it's interesting that you mention captain cook as a reference and that you completely leave out any mention of the fact that this land was stolen in the first place. under what basis of sovereignty do you claim the right to exclude other people when you are a beneficiary of it's theft?"

Q.A. On the basis that if I don't defend it, it will be trashed.
By what logic do you suggest I would volunteer to have what happened to the Aborigines happen to me or anyone else in this land? And, there are still aborigines in this land that don't care for a big population either. Immigration hasn’t really done a lot for aborigines, as you say. So, how is it that FOE can push immigration and pretend to be a friend of aborigines? It is well known that major figures in the mining industry are in favor of an Australian population of 50 million because they think that will wipe out land claims. The initials H.M. come to mind. And, I have often written about aborigines and the history of open borders 1788 style.

O.J. "why do you sound like chicken little?"

Q.A. This may have something to do with the fact that your brain is the size of a chicken's and it affects your perception? (No offense to chickens, who are ill-used enough in the service of the human plague.) Why do you sound so much like a friend of Mary Delahunty and Steve Bracks, may I ask?

If you mean, why do I sound as if I think the matter is urgent, the reason is 1. that all the things I love are being sent to oblivion by property developers and industrialists and the patter of an increasing number of human feet, so I am trying to stop the next ones from going, and 2. as population grows water, food, housing, are all costing me more and more money, and 3. I have to listen to greedy industrialists tell ME to pull my belt in when they are billionaires. I find this offensive! Obviously nothing you particularly care about has been affected yet. That is why it doesn’t seem urgent to you. (Which makes me wonder WHAT you value. Or are you simply unaware of what is happening?)

O.J. and yes the mainstream environment groups are pussy cats but you'll probably find they support your position.the only environment group that doesn't is friends of the earth.

Q.A. I actually contributed some of the stuff on your page, but I know that FOE’s current politics are wedge politics so I’m not inclined to waste energy dialoging. As far as I can see FOE are defending the corporate lobby's territory by attacking the real conservationists. This way, they figure, they will be left alone. It’s a little like one asylum seeker dobbing in another in order to get some points with the immigration department. I mean, if you don’t like my approach, okay, but at least I am not out there getting rich by stealing water for massive irrigation projects with the government’s assistance, or getting rich passing off pieces written and paid for by real-estate moguls and weasle accounting firms as NEWS, and coercing the government into letting me brainwash schoolgirls to have more children.

I note that the net site you refer to has a bunch of links on Pacific Island issues. I also note your apparent complete ignorance of Pacific Islander land-use and inheritance laws which preserved ecological sustainability in a great many islands over up to thousands of years until capitalism brought the idea of open borders to them. There is NOTHING we have in our land-use planning and economics to teach Pacific Islanders. They can teach us.

OJ Your arguments are instrinsicly racist

Q.A. You are saying that, not because it is true, but because you hope that by labeling me, no-one will read what I say. So really, you are hiding behind victims of racism in order to muzzle someone who maybe has something interesting to say. That’s pretty cowardly, isn’t it? Was it the Wizard or the Wicked Witch of the West who hid behind the big, scary mask, but was really very little and scared himself?

Have another look at what I said about immigration and aborigines. I could say more: Arguments for a big population are not predicated on preserving hunter gatherer lifestyles. They implicitly assume that agriculture is a superior way of life and thereby justify interfering with and overwhelming aboriginal lifestyles. That is what the 1788 immigration wave was predicated on. And that’s what the current wave of immigration is predicated on. As Tim Flannery points out. We haven’t learned very much, have we? We shouldn’t put Cook and Banks down though; they wrote very well about the aborigines. Have you read their diaries?

Banks, who was a botanist, immediately understood the significance of the low density of the Australian population. He wrote:

"Whatever may be the reason of this want of People is dificult [sic] to guess, unless perhaps the Barreness of the Soil and scarcity of fresh water; but why mankind should not increase here as fast as in other places ..." (Joseph Banks, Endeavour Journal, 1768-1771, 'August', p.123, Ed. J.C. Beaglehole, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1962, August.)

Also, you might take note that many of the people who initially came to Australia were political prisoners who were victims of overpopulation in England and Ireland. The British were obsessed with the population question. Charcoal, then coal had given rise to huge population growth, at the same time that the commons were enclosed and there was less need for labor. In Scotland tribal chiefs had sold out on clans and left them landless. It is the same story all over the world. Some of us who know a bit of history don’t want the same thing to happen here again – to us or to the aborigines. But our politicians are selling us out just like the Saudi Royal family is selling out the Saudi people. And you seem to be in favour of that. And you want me to waste my time discussing it with you????

O.J.: and bob carr is hardly going to save you. look at the amount of pollution industry in NSW puts out. look how much is consumed.

Q.A. That is because the rest of Australia's governments force high population growth on this country and half the people who come to this country go to Sydney. As population grows the industries grow to support them and the corporations get stronger and the environmental laws and the ability to enforce them are overwhelmed.

I mean, do you really think that people migrate to Sydney from other states and from other places in the world in order to grow vegetables, raise goats, and do their washing in streams? Strangle the fodder of the corporations – population growth – and you destroy their power over everything else. I will say it again: If population growth didn’t benefit capitalism and corporations, why would they be trying to increase it all the time?

O.J. population is just one aspect of a bigger picture relating to environmental destruction and it involves having a much sophisticated analysis of capitalism that you seem to be able to come up with.

Q.A. Let’s see. You seem to be saying that I should debate the meaning of capitalism before I militate against population growthism which I see daily destroying everything I hold dear around me. You must live in North Melbourne or some place so concreted over that you don’t realize what is happening here. They are bulldozing trees and rezoning farmland so fast here that I don’t have the TIME to finesse here. Population is a MULTIPLIER. Given the current economy how the hell do you imagine we can have more people and not do more damage? What time frame are you working in? What PLANET do you think you are defending?

Your kind of social engineering proposed remedies are all over the mainstream media. Do you think they would print it if they thought it would do the corporations or capitalism any harm? The problem is that there are expert social engineers called “Advertising Agents” who have the game of consumer growth completely sewn up.

Sophisticated analysis of capitalism has its place elsewhere. Try reading Marx and Engels.

O.J. noborder.org"

Q.A. I have nothing against fighting for refugees, but I cannot see how you could imagine defending regional biodiversity by having totally open borders in a world where human population is doomed to grow by another 3 million or so.

I would love to hear from some Friends of the Earth who have some sense of the rights of other creatures and can show me a workable policy with a deadline and a means for evaluation. I am sure you don’t speak for all of them.

Queenie

So to begin with i got the impression you thought i was from friends of the earth as i referenced some of their materials. I am not, though I admire much of their work though find them a little too conservative for my tastes.

but to rebutt some of you points.

"Look at any country with a big population and you will see political strife and social division grow as population grows."

this is a completely simplistic analysis of the sources of social conflict. sure putting lots of people in a small space with scant resources means they'll probably fight. but in countries like the US or UK you can't exlpain away social conflict as being because "there are too many people". if it is that much of the social conflict occurrs within the poorer classes is it because there are many of them or is it because they are squashed under the authority of the government, suffer racism, denied access to education, ripped of by their bosses, forced to live in poverty whilst fat cats rake in the dough. perhaps this class division has more to do with it? there are a whole bunch of reason for social conflict, population is a small factor.

"Why is this? Is it because you guys have got yourselves wedged into a corner by imagining that to defend asylum seekers you have to attack anyone who doesn’t want a big population?"

why does defending asylum seekers equal wanting a big population? infact the politics of open borders is not about wanting a big population. people are generally not particularly nomadic creatures. you have to look for the reason for the movement not just want to stop it. the movement of people must be looked upon in a global context and not just in terms of protecting the privilidge of australians. asylum seeker move for all sorts of reason: poverty, repression, environmental degradation and ambition. asylum seekers and migrants (as much as some sections of the left would have is beleive) are not passive victims of events outside of their control, they can also be subjects of their own autonomy.

The point i'm trying to make however though is that supporting struggles for justice in repressive regimes and acting against neo-liberlalism in a global, not national context is required. allowing people to be free from poverty and repression would probably change the amount of people moving. some will always want to move but most will most likely want to stay in their homes if allowed. you are acting merely on a nationalist level which means you agument comes out as wanting to protect australians priviledged status.

"Is it because you were all brainwashed as children by priests and nuns? Or is it that you are hiding behind the asylum seeker issue because you are really working for the Ford Foundation or the New America foundation or the Right to Lifers or the Catholics or the ALP or the Libs or Visy or the Age or the Australian or Oz Pop or APop or the Lavoisier Inst or….? Your logic is so convoluted I wouldn’t be surprised."

I would also drop the consiracy theories (perhaps you watched the matrix too many times?) and take my arguments seriously as the opinions i'm expressing aren't only held by me.

"So, how is it that FOE can push immigration and pretend to be a friend of aborigines?"

because "aboriginies" are not a generic group of people i would suppose, and there are indigenous groups that have helped asylum seekers in the past. I would also say that FOE don't seem to me to be "pushing immigration". They are critiquing, as I am, the potentially racist usages of your arguments and that of groups like Sustainable Population Australia and Tim Flannery. You realise that you line up with far right groups such as Australians Against Further Immigration? they quite heartily supported one nation.
the argument on the front page of their website sounds alot like yours
http://www.users.bigpond.com/AAFI.htm
" Sydney's environment is over-stressed with 4 million. Without action to end legal and illegal immigration, Sydney will grow to over 6-million. Degraded environments, more drugs, more crime, more disease, more unemployment more gridlock more pollution.

Recently the Melb.Herald found 96.7% wanted immigration stopped or cutback. In every poll since 1988 more than 2/3rds of all Australians ALWAYS want LESS Immigration. Democracy? The Lib/Labs/Dems are captive to developers privatisers & global billionaires."

"I have often written about aborigines and the history of open borders 1788 style."

I don't think that anyone currently advocating no borders politics is advocating imperialism and colonisation. i think you are creating a straw argument. Capitalists are for open borders for capital and the rich. I am talking about globalisation from below. about being anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.

"Why do you sound so much like a friend of Mary Delahunty and Steve Bracks, may I ask?"

I didn't realise steve bracks was anti-capitalist and for the abolition of all states. cool! :) i'll have to look him up.

My reference to chicken little and "the sky is falling" is becuase there is a general trend in the environment movement for millinarian style apocalyptic visions.

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/millenarian.html

I am waring of anyone preeching of the coming of the apocalypse, whether christian or environmentalist. environmentalists have been doing it for years and it is yet to arrive which is what makes it less and less beleivable everyday.

this is not to say that things are not bad. these kind of theories do relate to real changes going on but spare us "the end of the world" theories.

"I also note your apparent complete ignorance of Pacific Islander land-use and inheritance laws which preserved ecological sustainability in a great many islands over up to thousands of years until capitalism brought the idea of open borders to them."

mmm, i never mentioned anything about pacific islanders so how do you suppose i am ignorant of such things? again you confuse colonialism and imperialism with open borders. i would not be surprised if many of the pacific islands previously had very limited border regimes if any at all given their were no nation states there until the colonists came along and created them. but yes am ignorant on history of pacific islanders, i never said i knew much about them.

I apologise if you took my statement that "Your arguments are instrinsicly racist" as being you are a racist. i don't think what your saying is explicitly racist. I am saying that the ideas can and are used by racist groups. I am saying a critique of population has to be far more sophisticated if it is not to fall into that trap.

The politics of zero immigration require a strong and large state to enforce them. I am against this as i think such as state will equally repress segments of the population inside in the same way that it excludes those outside.

"Also, you might take note that many of the people who initially came to Australia were political prisoners who were victims of overpopulation in England and Ireland. The British were obsessed with the population question. Charcoal, then coal had given rise to huge population growth, at the same time that the commons were enclosed and there was less need for labor."

I think you are confused. The commons were enclosed exactly because there was a need for labour. It was a way to force people off their land and into the cities and factories. The political prisoners were not victims of overpopulation they were victims of an authoritarian regime hell bent of protecting the interests of a priviledged elite and it's colonianal expansion. you are making truly bizarre statements here. you'll have to explain to me. coal gives rise to population growth? wouldn't advances in medicine and agriculture have had a greater effect?

"If population growth didn’t benefit capitalism and corporations, why would they be trying to increase it all the time?"

Well i think this kind of blanket statement is part of the problem in your argument. They are not trying to increase population. They are trying to increase the population of a specific group of people, consumers. there is no point increasing population if those people are going to be a burden on capital. look at the mass of people with AIDS in africa, do the rich governments or corporations give a shit? no because they can't work and they can't consume expensive drugs.

"The growth economy, which relies on consumption, also relies on population growth. The government and the pipe merchants and the property developers are ALL “calling” for lower consumption, but they are actually beating consumption UPWARDS."

Where are these people calling for lower consumption? i have never seen any kind of corporate or government message that has told me i should consume less.

"I believe that the consumer society is FED by high population."

So those starving people in africa go out and buy 5 new cars every time they have baby? you are completly ignoring class differences in your analysis by focusing merely on population.

as that article that adhok mentioned criticising Tim Flannery:

"As every science student is taught, environmental impact is a function of individual ecological footprint multiplied by population size. Any population is too high if the ecological footprint of its citizens is too great."

"By attacking me you are assisting your enemies."

I'm not attacking you, i'm attacking your argument as i find it regressive. i don't think debating ideas means i am assisting corporate hegemony.

"Strangle the fodder of the corporations – population growth – and you destroy their power over everything else. I will say it again: If population growth didn’t benefit capitalism and corporations, why would they be trying to increase it all the time"

as i said they are only trying to increase a certain type of population growth that works in the interests of capital. as can be seen from the government response to those that arrive "illegally" here there are many people who are not useful to capital except in their ability to be used platforms to appeal to australians' racism and win elections.

"Given the current economy how the hell do you imagine we can have more people and not do more damage?"

Change the economy. perhaps that is where we differ. to achieve real ecological sustainability involves overthrowing capitalism. overthrowing this economy that is based on growth at all costs. if population is reduced capital will have to find a way to increase consumption, create giant developments, anything to stimulate the economy and growth.

"Your kind of social engineering proposed remedies are all over the mainstream media."

Where in the mainstream media are they talking about this? i have never seen it?

"Sophisticated analysis of capitalism has its place elsewhere. Try reading Marx and Engels."

no, it has it's place here becuase it is all linked. you cannot just take one piece of the problem and expect it to solve everything else. a far more integrated analysis is required. the great strength of the "anti-globalisation" movements has been there ability to integrate issues together and provide a fuller spectrum critique of the workings of capital. I think we need to continue that work rather than the far more insular politics you are advocating.

It seems that when disaster strikes, whether it be
tragedy in a highway accident or a murder in a
good neighborhood, those suffering the loss will
say they knew it happens to others but never
expected it would happen to them.

I had a thoughtful conversation last night with an
80 year old man. We agreed that there are three
likely reasons for a young couple to decide not to
babies; looming resource shortages, rapid global
warming and terrorism... all with synergistic
effects.

This man has many grandchildren and a few
great grandchildren.

I think most Americans know that their excessive
energy driven lifestyles are destroying the
environment for the future, but they refuse to believe
it can happen to them or theirs until it does happen. I
think the likely reasons mentioned above... resources
shortages, global warming and terrorism... will come
directly and soon to most, then they will swear that
they just thought it would never come to their family.

I think Greens, Democrats, ACF and WWF are failing
by remaining silent about the big population business
lobby. Media continues to allow the cover up to go on.

No easy answers for sure, but great to respect enough to debate issues raised.

Lets not get personal tho, and not be blinded by strong feelings (nor exclude them altogether).
E.g. I question charged references to One Nation. Just because some of their policies sucked doesn't mean all their policies did, I agreed with their anti-free trade and pro citizen-initiated referenda stances. Baby-bathwater syndrome leads to lots of wailing & irrate relatives.

Queenie:" Why don’t the Greens, the Democrats, the ACF and WWF come out fighting for the rest of us? Perhaps cos they're understaffed/funded & overrun. How many battles can YOU fight simultaneously?

adhok says;

"....Something that I haven't seen noted is that while the huge consumption of our population makes us unsustainable, it is over-consumption of fossil fuels (as inefficient as that has been) which has allowed the planet to support such a large number of humans - a population which has grown 50% in my 29 years from ~4billion to 6+. ..."

That's a crucial observation.

Also, it is towards the developed world's major centres of consumption that global immigration will inevitably tend. And why wouldn't it?

And it is towards the same levels of consumption that the third world aspires. Of course.

These two things mean that consumption per capita is going to tend ever up - not down.

The prospects of convincing people to lower their aspirations are about zero.

It is far more likely that people will respond to conservation arguments based on population control rather than on reducing their consumption.

The left and greenies are such hypocrites about this (as ever)

It always makes me laugh how so many first world "greenies" will preach the message of reduced consumption generally, but still insist on their own right to high levels of personal consumption when compared to other societies.

They'll fuss over whether their Volvo is running on lead free fuel and has asbestos-free brake pads, and look forward to the day when they can get a Toyota Prius.

But they still want a car - and air travel, and ready electricity, and television, computers, fresh water on tap, airconditioning, etc, etc.

Quite literally, one of Sydney's best known environmentalists (Judy Reizes) drives a wapping, gas guzzling Toyota Land Cruiser and lives on a quarter acre block of prime Harbousride real estate - and has no hesitation about jumping on airlines for OS conferences and the like.

But she goes on and on and on and on and on and on about how "you" have to reduce your consumption for the sake of the planet.

The left must preach this contradictory line because they don't have the backbone to front up to the population growth problem.

Nor can they reasonably anticipate preaching lower levels of consumption to workers, nor preach lower aspirations for the third world.

It might offend Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe or Muhommar Gaddafi and the like, because they are busy trying to build up their populations and - ironically - their own levels of national per capita GDP.

Much better to belittle the population debate as "obviously racist" - because there's no way the gutless idiots on the political left will ever have an answer to the problem.

In the meantime, they'll virtually riot in the streets because there's a nuclear reactor in Lucas Heights and and a sewage outfall pipe on North Head, or whatever.

In other words, focus on comparatively trivial - but topical - issues that mean diddly squat in the big picture, but create the illusion of addressing environmental issues.

Like, do the fuckwits at Critical Mass and Keep Australia Beutiful really think their inane posturing actually means anything in terms of global environmental degradation?

I always find it particularly weak when rock stars like Peter Garret and movie stars like Susan Sarendon preach "restraint".

I think Susan gets, what, 20 million a picture?

Easy for her to bleat about what you and everyone else should do.

from the air
by anti-sustainability parrots Wednesday January 07, 2004 at 09:06 AM

You're sounding more like the nazi Victor Davis Hanson every day, Chris.

Holywood stars have to "assuage their guilt" for being such rabid consumers by "bleating" about the little problems instead of "planting trees" and "marrying someone from a different race". [!]

I suggest we ignore any efforts towards co-operative reduction of energy consumption, pollution and population, ridicule proven renewable resources, and stick our heads up our little corporate council-funded arses while the planet teeters precariously on the brink of a runaway greenhouse.

oh poor little spin,
naive generalisations and silly insults again!

just for the record, can you personally promise the rest of us either not to breed, consume, or utilise too many of the earths resources ?

spinnies not right wing at all, just a pathetic social misfit.

".....just for the record, can you personally promise the rest of us either not to breed, consume, or utilise too many of the earths resources ? ...."

Well, I have never bred - and no, I cannot promise not to "consume, or utilise too many of the earths resources".

That's the very point, you idiot.

It is precisely that reason that only a fool - such as yourself - would pretend you CAN promise not to "consume, or utilise too many of the earths resources".

Populations increase exponentially, you poor dopey retard, and as long as they continue to do so, resource depletion will also increase exponentially even if at a slower rate.

That can only mean that eventually, they'll run out

Please, don't tell me I am going to have to draw you a graph, you poor drip?

just for fun
by belated seasons greetings Wednesday January 07, 2004 at 10:10 AM

crikey spin, you're personal well-being REALLY depends upon the ability to publish comments on indymedia, doesn't it?

just pleased to know you're not weeing in the shallow end gene pool.

spinnie = very easy (and fun) to wind up.

So Queenie, do you eat beef and seafood? Enjoy sugar, banana's etc produced in large pesticide soaked monoculture platations?

Because it is these practices that are destroying much more of the Australian environment then simply numbers and urban development. You should know that more land is cleared for beef for export then for domestic housing (which is usually built on already degraded or cleared land).

Sure a larger population leaves a larger ecological footprint. However a small population that consumes excessively (for example USA - 250 million), leaves a massively larger footprint then a large population that doesn't consume excessively (for example India).

So it is HOW you live that really counts and not how MANY people living. Organic gardening and permaculture techniques can allow Australia to have a lifestyle that is not destructive, but still produce enough to share with the refugees.

nice to see some thoughtful debate on this tricky issue. I think that basically everyone agrees that it is humanity's unsustainable over-consumption is the key problem we're discussing, but for Queenie it is the population aspect of this which is a more immediately politically useful angle to curb over-consumption. I think liamj's point of not slagging of a whole group or group of arguments because you disagree with an aspect of them is really bloody important here where the political lines could be drawn too early.

OJ, I was surprised that you talk about unsustainable ecological practices, yet deny any environmental 'apocalypse.' Unsustainability IMPLIES crisis - that current practices cannot continue for very practical reasons. For much of the Earth's surface (and people perhaps) the 'apocalypse' is here already.

Feral scum says this;

"....Sure a larger population leaves a larger ecological footprint. However a small population that consumes excessively (for example USA - 250 million), leaves a massively larger footprint then a large population that doesn't consume excessively (for example India).

So it is HOW you live that really counts and not how MANY people living. Organic gardening and permaculture techniques can allow Australia to have a lifestyle that is not destructive, but still produce enough to share with the refugees. ...."

Couple of things here.

a) The population debate is NOT about refugees.

Indeed, the refugee debate is being used to obscure the population debate.

Currently, if our population is growing by about 200,000 each year (correct me someone if that's wrong), and about half of that is by immigration (about 100,000 per year) then;

* We could easily take in, say, 50,000 refugees a year, and
* cut our total immigration by half, and
* cut our population growth by about 25 per cent,

- if all we did was take the 50,000 refugees.

The 100, 000 people settling here each year are mostly NOT refugees.

b) it is true that the ecological footprint of someone living in Australia is much greater than that of someone living in India (or even Switzerland).

So, clearly increasing the population in Australia by 200,000 a year is not a particularly smart move

c) this would remain true even if the ecological footprint of Australians were reduced - because it is very unlikely it could be reduced at a rate sufficient of offset the increase in populations which grow (as I pointed out) exponentially.

What Feral Scum is proposing here is an EXPONENTIAL decrease in resource consumption.

No?

And there is simply no chance that will EVER happen.

You would be very unlikely to reduce it even at a steady arithmetic rate? Hey?

Is there the slightest bit of evidence that, say, China or India or Indonesia or Brazil or Bangladesh or ANYWHERE intends to reduce per capita conspumption of the world's resources at EXPONENTIAL rates in excess of population growth rates?

For fuck's sake - open your bloody eyes.

Spin, some advice is in order then.

In the words of TISM, kill yourself now and avoid the rush.

I actually agree with spinifex here. Talk of "sustainable levels of growth" is fundamentally flawed: an impossibility be it in economics, in consumption, in population (yes, even if you except the kook ideas of populating space!)

Here's some quotes on this from Walter Youngquist:

A resource may have a life of 100 years at the "current rate of consumption." But, at the seemingly low rate of a five percent annual increase in demand, the resource will only last about 36 years. Because almost all resources are finite, and the population has no theoretical limit to growth, ultimately the population by its exponential growth of demand will overwhelm the available resource.

That we are living in a time of exponential growth is ably presented by Lapp in his classic book The Logarithmic Century.(18) That the general public does not appreciate the importance of the effect of exponential growth has been pointed out by Bartlett who has written a convincing discussion of the myth of "at current rate of consumption," and the large numbers which quickly result from a seemingly insignificant annual rate of increase in use of a resource.(3) In other writings and in numerous lectures, Bartlett has pointed out, by several striking examples, that this is one of the most dangerously misleading myths to which the public is continually exposed. He states, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

from Myths and Realities of Mineral Resources: http://www.oilcrisis.com/youngquist/chapter27.htm

Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong! Prove us wrong!
And we hereby extend our $100,000 challenge to prove us wrong!

If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction, were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the greenhouse effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time... and that substance is the same one that has done it before... CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA!

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the only known plant that can be grown from the Equator to the Arctic Circle and to the Antarctic Circle; from the mountains to the valleys, from the oceans to the plains, including arid lands and everywhere in between.

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the healthiest plant for the ground out of the 300,000 known species, and the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, because it has a root system that grows 10 to 12 inches in 30 days compared to one inch for rye, barley grass, etc. The roots penetrate up to six feet deep, pulverizing the soil and making it arable. After harvest it leaves a root system that is mulched into the ground, revitalizing the land and making it live once again. It is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all plant life.

All of my information about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA has been taken from [U.S.] Federal and State Department of Agriculture reports, articles from Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Pulp & Paper Magazine, Scientific American, entries from encyclopedias and pharmacopoeias, and studies from all over the world during the last 200 years. This is all public information. The United States government is hiding the fact that 125 years ago, and even as far back as 4000 BC,
**** EIGHTY PERCENT OF OUR ECONOMY ****
was based on the use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for paper, fiber and fuel. Ten to 20 percent of our drug economy was based on CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA medicines, 125 years ago.

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was part of our everyday life. Virtually every farm and every plot of land in the cities and towns across the United States and the world, from 100-125 years ago and before, had a CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA patch growing. The U.S. government's cover-up of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA outrages me and it should outrage you, too. I have been studying CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA for over 30 years, and I can't believe how the U.S. government, in 90 seconds in Congress, could outlaw "MARIJUANA" in 1937, without the people realizing they were outlawing CANNABIS/HEMP, the most perfect plant for the planet! They even got other countries to outlaw it, too, after the Second World War and beyond. From 1740 to 1940, 80 percent of all the world's CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was grown (mostly by Cossacks, who were indentured servants), and then imported from, Russia.

I will again reiterate a few of the facts about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, which you already know from reading my book, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes."

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was the NUMBER ONE annually renewable natural resource for 80 percent of all paper, fiber, textiles and fuel, from 6000 years ago until about 125 years ago. Furthermore, it was used for five to 50 percent of the food, light, land and soil reclamation, and even 20 percent or more of all medicine. Everyone, from the educated to the uneducated, the farmer to the townsperson, the doctors and the scientists used

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA products and depended on them.75 to 90 percent of all paper used from at least 100 AD to 1883 was made of CANNABIS/HEMP. Books, (including Bibles), money and newspapers all over the world have been mainly printed on CANNABIS/HEMP for as long as these things have existed in human history.

A hundred and 25 years ago, 70 to 90 percent of all rope, twine, cordage, ship sails, canvas, fiber, cloth, etc., was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP fiber! It was replaced by DuPont's newly discovered petrochemical fiber (nylon) beginning in 1937. By comparison, CANNABIS/HEMP is four times softer than cotton, four times warmer, four times more water absorbent, has three times the strength of cotton, is many times more durable, is flame retardant, and doesn't use pesticides. FIFTY PERCENT OF ALL PESTICIDES ARE USED ON COTTON yet cotton uses only ONE PERCENT of the farmland in the U.S! CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the most health giving plant on Earth and it DOESN'T REQUIRE PESTICIDES OR HERBICIDES! It is the healthiest plant for human consumption, and for the Earth itself.

Eighty percent of our economy depended on CANNABIS/HEMP for paper, fiber and fuel, 125 years ago. At that time, it took 300 man-hours to harvest an acre of CANNABIS/HEMP, but with the invention of the brand new HEMP decorticator in the 1930s, it only took one & 1/2 to two hours. This is equivalent to reducing the labor burden from $6,000 down to $40 per acre, in today's money. Keep in mind that the cotton gin, in 1793, reduced the man-hours from 300 hours down to two hours to harvest and clean an acre of cotton. CANNABIS/HEMP would have taken over the cotton market, as it is far superior to cotton, and pesticide free. The role of CANNABIS/HEMP should be determined by market supply and demand and not by undue influence of prohibition laws, federal subsidies and huge tariffs that keep the natural from replacing the synthetic. I repeat, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the KING KONG of the King Kongs of all plants!

Of all the 300,000 species of plants on Earth, no other plant source can compare with the nutritional value of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA seeds. It is the only plant on Earth that provides us with the NUMBER ONE source, and the perfect balance of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, globulin edestin protein, and essential oils all combined in one plant, and in a form which is most naturally digestible to our bodies.

Prior to the 1800s, CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil was the NUMBER ONE source for lighting oil throughout the world. Until 1937-38, even paints and varnishes were 80 percent CANNABIS/HEMPSEED oil. CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is non-toxic and has been used to make high-grade diesel fuel, oil, aircraft and precision oil and even the NUMBER ONE vegetable oil. The U.S. Army/Navy standards purchasing specifications list HEMP OIL as the NUMBER ONE preferred lubricant for their machinery. CANNABIS/HEMP is the best sustainable source of plant pulp for biomass fuel to make charcoal, gas, methanol, gasoline and electricity in a natural way.

In 1850, 80 percent of all paper, fiber, fuel, and oil were made out of CANNABIS/HEMP in America and the rest of the world. This was before the discovery of coal and petroleum for energy in the late 1850s...before the start of the worst permanent pollution ever experienced on Earth... fossil fuel pollution (coal and petroleum)!!

As a medicine, the worldwide use of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA goes back at least 6000 years. Remember, 10 to 20 percent of our medicines used to be CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA based medicines. It has been found to be healthy and effective in the treatment of chronic pain, cancer, strokes, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, sickle cell anemia, AIDS wasting and many other illnesses, including simple nausea, appetite stimulant, anxiety and muscle pains, etc.

On September 6, 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man," and asked the Drug Enforcement
Administration to reschedule it. The DEA refused, keeping it as a Schedule I drug, which they say "has no known medical use"! Thousands of studies have been done all over the world, documenting the medical use of MARIJUANA (England, Spain, Hungary,
Holland, and the U.S., just to name a few). No one has ever died from MARIJUANA in over 6000 years of recorded history... unless they were shot by a COP!

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was also used for land reclamation until 1915. CANNABIS/HEMP was planted or left to grow feral as ground cover and on riverbanks, and not intended for harvest. It is the NUMBER ONE plant in history used to prevent mudslides and loss of watershed, and river and soil erosion on Earth. It has been illegal to grow this #1 plant in the United States since 1937.What disgusts me the most is how the U.S. government, as well as the people, knew about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and praised its value and then look what happened! In literally 90 seconds, the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed in Congress. By using the unknown name "MARIJUANA" instead of the familiar name "CANNABIS HEMP", Congress was able to accomplish this because no one knew what plant they were talking about. CANNABIS/HEMP became illegal and was replaced by petrochemical products, coal and natural gas. They made it such a banned and forbidden plant that the words "HEMP" and "CANNABIS/HEMP" were not even taught in schools from the 1940s, 50s and thereafter.

The role of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was erased from America's history (as well as most of the rest of the world's) after 1945. To prove it, think... what did you learn about CANNABIS/HEMP in grade school? High school? College? From your parents and grandparents? Nothing! (Unless it was from the underground press within the last fifteen to twenty years.) The continuing suppression of this information by the U.S. government places us all in mortal jeopardy. I believe that, in order to save our planet, we
must use non-fossil fuel energy.

CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA, in conjunction with wind, solar, tidal and hydroelectric power, could save the planet by providing all of our energy, fuel, paper, fiber, and 10 to 20 percent of our medical needs, naturally. It would also reduce acid rain and chemical pollution, rebuild the soil, and reverse the greenhouse effect (no other plant can do this!). CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA was used to make over 25,000 products before it was outlawed in 1937.

Why does the U.S. government want to eradicate this seed, out of all the seeds on Earth? They want to kill the most perfect plant on the planet. We must stop this insanity and demand that the laws against CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA be one hundred percent repealed!!

Federal Attorney General John Ashcroft, Drug Enforcement Administration head, Asa Hutchison, and White House Drug Czar, John Walters, have been given all of these proven facts and yet are still set against the legalization of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA and recognition of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIUANA knowledge. For whatever personal reasons, they refuse to believe the facts and are willing to sacrifice the future of our planet and the health of our people by keeping it illegal.

The ban of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is so extreme and its intention is to hide the truth. The truth is that out of the 300,000 species, and the millions and millions of subspecies, of plants on Earth, CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA is the NUMBER ONE plant for our survival and quality of life here on Earth. Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government and Attorney General John Ashcroft have been calling MARIJUANA users "terrorists" and yet the government of the United States has been "terrorizing" MARIJUANA users for the last 65 years! There have been over 14 million arrests for CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA in the last 65 years, in the U.S. alone! 13 million were within the last 30 years!

NO ONE has taken the $100,000 challenge to prove me wrong. Why? Because I am right. The U.S. government has been lying to us since the early 1900s. Do economic interests and the police have more to say than the people about the future of our planet? How angry are you for being lied to by the U.S. government about CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA? Are you willing to make a stand right now? No one can dispute this information and knowledge. YOU have to join me in this fight. Either you are on the U.S. government's side or you are on my side.

I wonder if adhok and his pal Chris Parsons are prepared to accept this ten year old $100,000 challenge.....?

Jack: Hemp is no doubt an impressive crop but some of these claims seem excessive. I was particularly suspicious about the claims that hemp can reverse the greenhouse effect. I don't think there's any way it could do this except to capture carbon out of the air and store it in the ground (as in carbon sequestration). The only thing I can think of that he might be suggesting that we grow crops of hemp and then bury the harvest, but that would not really be a viable option on a hungry planet. I'm left guessing because he makes no further reference to it on his site.

As an energy solution I doubt hemp provides any magic answers. It may grow well, but it relies on the the same fundamental chemistry of photosynthesis to capture the sun's energy, which at best, is only about 1% (0.1% according to one book I have here) successful in capturing the Sun's energy and converting it to biomass!

Monocultures tend to be less good at capturing energy than biodiverse ecosystems because niche organisms capture energy missed by other organisms.

Industrial farming also requires a lot of energy input from fossil fuel (as in the cartoon). Hemp may be better than most, but consider the following paragraph:

"In the United States, humankind is already managing and using more than half of all the solar energy captured by photosynthesis. Yet even this is insufficient to our needs, and we are actually using nearly three times that much energy, or about 40% more energy than is captured by all plants in the United States. This rate is made possible only because we are temporarily drawing upon stored fossil energy..."
see: http://www.dieoff.org/page136.htm

So you could not grow enough hemp, or any crop in the US to provide enough energy to maintain industrial society at its current rate of consumption, even if you displaced food crops. It may serve some niche purposes as an oil or ethanol source in the future, but I suspect we will shall be far more concerned with feeding ourselves. I say all this not to discourage hemp use. It may be a much better alternative for other uses such as fibre (although I've never found it to be soft as he claims) and food than other crops.

========
"Hemp is no doubt an impressive crop but some of these claims seem excessive."
========

Which claims
Where's your $100,000?

Go read Jack's website and you'll find that the vast majority of his agricultural capapilities **evidence** comes from none other than ....

.....THE U.S. Department of Agriculture!

Note that the first crop on Earth to which the term BILLION DOLLAR was applied was ...MARIJUANA!

(read the popular mechanics article (see above) in it's entirety at http://www.jackherer.com

So it was an extremely ad hok dismissal of the evidence, adhok.

Where's your $100,000?

=====================
" I was particularly suspicious about the claims that hemp can reverse the greenhouse effect. I don't think there's any way it could do this except to capture carbon out of the air and store it in the ground (as in carbon sequestration). "
=====================

Argument from ignorance, lack of imagination or intentional obfuscation.

Try using it for building materials (cannabis concrete from France) and plastics and paints and wood and clothes, and in Methanol (what racing cars use) to atmosphere carbon cycles fro transport (as opposed to the current crust to atmosphere fossil-fuelled carbon pump).

Freed up from Du Pont/Hearst-esque exploitation requiring vast quantities of lignin removing sulphide chemicals, the forests--which like all plants thrive on increased C02 anyway--will take care of the rest.

This doesn't meant we shouldn't exploit all other viable renewable solar-fuelled-cycical options, such as solar, wind and wave transduction technologies.

The earth is abundant with sustainable and exploitable energy cycles, and the only reason for so much resistance to PROVEN alternatives is the number of well-oiled frauds in the press paid to produce anti-scientific and anti-environmental ipse-dixit nonsense like this:

adhok:
=======================
the only thing I can think of that he might be suggesting that we grow crops of hemp and then BURY THE HARVEST [!!!]
=======================

dieoff is by a product of anti-environmental frauds of the "hysterical" variety (see scientific analyst Cheryl Seal's article on the topic at Unknown News), btw.

I suggest you try reading the actual content of Jack's brief summary (above), then visit http://www.jackherer.com/chapters.html to read The Emperor Wears No Clothes in its entirety.

Then come back with your $100,000. Put some clothes on. Show us you prize.

btw - your cartoon merely emphasized the level of deceipt involved in defaming PROVEN renewable resources, and demonstrates your unwillingness to assess the evidence...

..since MARIJUANA requires ABSOLUTELY NO PESTICIDES - ZERO!

$100,000 still awaits for your amazing genius at "debunking", adhok....

"I suspect we will shall be far more concerned with feeding ourselves"

- and it just so happens--oddly enough--that hemp seeds are -

quote:
=============
...the healthiest and most nutritious seeds on Earth.

Hemp seeds are 25% protein [only soy produces more proteing than hemp, but]:

Hemp seed protein is more digestible than soy protein.
[the most digestable protein on earth, in fact]

Hemp seeds contain ALL the essential amino acids and fatty acids necessary to maintain health.

Hemp seeds contain the highest amount of essential fatty acids of all plants!

Hemp seeds a safe and healthier alternative to meat products.

Hemp seeds are also great fishing bate and an excellent dietary supplement for songbirds [essential, in fact] and free range hens.

http://www.cannabis-seedbank.nl/hemp.htm
======================================

hemp is more effective than any currently available synthetic pharmaceutical for reducing serum cholesterol:

=====================================
Hemp seed oil also has high amounts of vitamin E, calcium, magnesium and potassium.

Staines suggests taking a tablespoon of the oil every day to ward off osteoporosis and to help clean out the arteries. "Think of hemp seed oil as the anti-cholesterol oil," Staines says.

David Klurfeld, chair of the nutrition and food science department at Wayne State University, agrees. "Hemp seed oil has a very good ratio of Omega 3s and 6s, and these offer some of the better fats for reducing cholesterol," even if science doesn’t quite understand how, he says.

http://www.metrotimes.com/19/39/Features/healHemp.htm
===============================

The recommended intake ratio of the omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) to omega-3 linolenic acid (LNA) is somewhere between 3:1 to 6:1. In the US the average LA:LNA ratio is 10:1, but obviously this does not apply to individual diets which may be quite different from average diets. Flaxseed, unlike most other foods, has a more LNA than LA, about 1:4. So obviously, it must be properly balanced with other fats so that the shift doesn't go in the opposite direction. By contrast, corn oil has an LA;LNA ratio of 29:1, olive oil 15:1 and canola oil 2:1. the best balance of LA:LNA is in hemp oil (3:1)
http://www.metrotimes.com/19/39/Features/healHemp.htm
===================================

and from Nikki Goldbeck of the U.S. government Centers for Disease Control and Prevention :

=====================================
The recommended intake ratio of the omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) to omega-3 linolenic acid (LNA) is somewhere between 3:1 to 6:1. In the US the average LA:LNA ratio is 10:1, but obviously this does not apply to individual diets which may be quite different from average diets. Flaxseed, unlike most other foods, has a more LNA than LA, about 1:4. So obviously, it must be properly balanced with other fats so that the shift doesn't go in the opposite direction. By contrast, corn oil has an LA;LNA ratio of 29:1, olive oil 15:1 and canola oil 2:1. the best balance of LA:LNA is in hemp oil (3:1)
http://calcium.tamu.edu/Mickey/newsletters/Volume_3_Number_8.html
====================================

canvas - from the dutch for cannabis
bang.la.desh - marijuana.land.people

Hemphill, Texas (where the nosecone of the Space Shuttle landed after failed re-entry)
- named, like approximately 15 towns in the U.S., after the hemp industry on which it was founded.

Prior to the U.S. Declaration of Independence (which was drafted on hemp):

===========================
...several colonies passed legal tender laws, hemp was so valued it was used to pay taxes.

Until 1776 many colonies passed laws to encourage farmers to produce hemp, Virginia designed laws to compel farmers, fining those who did not comply."
http://www.globalhemp.com/Archives/History/hemp_history.html
=================================

“hemp is one of the most profitable productions the earth furnishes in northern climates; as it employs a great number of poor people in a very advantageous manner, if its manufacture is carried on properly: It ... becomes worthy of the serious attention...of every trading man, who truly loves his country.”
-- Edward Antil, Observations on the Raising and Dressing of Hemp, 1777

Why is our hempen history buried, adhok?

(With apologies to the original poster about the tangent on this thread...)

I actually emailed Jack Herer about the greenhouse claims four days ago. As yet no reply. I really do want to know what he means. I don't dispute all of his claims - and where there's steam there may be pudding - but I don't think it helps to get over-enthusiastic about a good thing, to the point of making spurious claims. If he doesn't do a good job of defending himself I'll asking him for his money.

>Argument from ignorance, lack of imagination or
>intentional obfuscation."

No doubt I suffer from the first two but probably not the third. As for carbon sequestration in clothes and concrete - sure using renewable materials is a preferable alternative to using fossil fuels from a greenhouse perspective (as long as you are not land clearing to make crop land - in which case carbon from the soil and rotting vegetation may be released) but you can not reverse the greenhouse effect without taking atmospheric carbon and taking it ~permanently out of circulation. Even concrete and clothes decay, releasing carbon. That's why carbon sequestration projects seek to bury it.

>dieoff is by a product of anti-environmental frauds of the
>"hysterical" variety (see scientific analyst Cheryl Seal's
>article on the topic at Unknown News), btw.

I looked up that article because I find the discussion on dieoff.org pretty depressing and I'm open to critiques of it. Unfortunately, Cheryl Seal misrepresents the site terribly and doesn't even attempt to critisice dieoff.org in any meaningful way. She does not quote from the site nor even attempt to summarise the website's position. She seems to allege that dieoff.org is somehow intentionally muddying the science around global warming, which is not at all correct - I don't know where she gets this from. Equally incorrect is her inference that the site is biased by economic thinking! She can't have even read the first page! Dominant economic thinking prescribes supply/demand as the solution for all our ills. Dieoff critiques this kind economic theory on it's front page, and bases it's own analysis on the physical realities of resource depletion and energy analysis - rather than pure economic analysis.

Quote: "In the 1950s, oil producers [in the US] discovered about fifty barrels of oil for every barrel invested in drilling and pumping. Today, the figure is only about five for one. Sometime around 2005, that figure [in the US] will become one for one. Under that latter scenario, even if the price of oil reaches $500 a barrel, it wouldn't make "energy sense" to look for new oil in the USA because it would consume more energy than it would recover!"
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm

The premise of dieoff.org is that the Earth has exceded it's sustainable population carrying capacity, something which humans have achieved through the rapid use of nonrenewable energy from fossil fuels esp. for transport and agricultural output. When the fossil fuel production peaks, it will be followed soon after by a drop in human population, probably a catastrophic one, although there may be ways to soften the landing.

It presents a 'neo-Malthusian' premise - and probably these types of predictions tend always to place catastrophy as immenent. But it seems to handle the premise in a very non-hysterical way. Hysteria suggests panic or ineffectual response to a situation. In fact, this potentially hysterical subject seems to have been handled with deep consideration, and a lot of scientific research and analysis. To attack the position of dieoff.org, you should probably first be attacking the oil geologists, statisticians and other scientists who publish papers on resource depletion and it's effects. There is, in fact, an ongoing dialogue between them and their critics, but the most successful attacks I have seen so far do not undermine the basic premise, but some of the less significant methods employed to predict future oil production.

Just as a final note, try to appreciate that I am not making a black and white argument, that my partial agreement with spinifex does not make me his idealogical compadre (I even agree with Leon once in a while) and that hemp may be a remarkable crop, but that it does not seem to solve the energy crisis which dieoff.org presents, nor reverse greenhouse. I am not in the employ of the cotton industry, the alchohol industry, the police, etc. etc.

(I even agree with Leon once in a while)

I think that demonstrates your fraudery quite adequately, fraud. Thanks.

=========================

Chapter 1

Overview of the History of Cannabis Hemp

For the Purpose of Clarity in this Book: Explanations or documentations marked with an asterisk (*) are listed at the end of the related paragraph(s). For brevity, other sources for facts, anecdotes, histories, studies, etc., are cited in the body of the text or included in the appendices. The facts cited herein are generally verifiable in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was printed primarily on paper produced with cannabis hemp for over 150 years. However, any encyclopedia (no matter how old) or good dictionary will do for general verification purposes.

Cannabis Sativa L.

Also known as: Hemp, cannabis hemp, Indian (India) hemp, true hemp, muggles, weed, pot, marijuana, reefer, grass, ganja, bhang, "the kind," dagga, herb, etc., all names for exactly the same plant!

What's in a Name? (U.S. Geography)

HEMPstead, Long Island; HEMPstead County, Arkansas; HEMPstead, Texas; HEMPhill, North Carolina; HEMPfield, Pennsylvania, among others, were named after cannabis growing regions, or after family names derived from hemp growing.

American Historical Notes

In 1619, America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia, "ordering" all farmers to "make tryal of" (grow) Indian hempseed. More mandatory (must-grow) hemp cultivation laws were enacted in Massachusetts in 1631, in Connecticut in 1632 and in the Chesapeake Colonies into the mid-1700s.

Even in England, the much-sought-after prize of full British citizenship was bestowed by a decree of the crown on foreigners who would grow cannabis, and fines were often levied against those who refused.

Cannabis hemp was legal tender (money) in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. Why? To encourage American farmers to grow more.1

You could pay your taxes with cannabis hemp throughout America for over 200 years.2

You could even be jailed in America for not growing cannabis during several periods of shortage, e.g., in Virginia between 1763 and 1767. (Herndon, G.M., Hemp in Colonial Virginia, 1963; The Chesapeake Colonies, 1954; L.A.Times, August 12, 1981; et al.)

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis on their plantations. Jefferson,3 while envoy to France, went to great expense - and even considerable risk to himself and his secret agents - to procure particularly good hempseeds smuggled illegally into Turkey from China. The Chinese Mandarins (political rulers) so valued their hempseed that they made its exportation a capital offense.

The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp "plantations"* (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton. Most of these plantations were located in the South or in the border states, primarily because of the cheap slave labor available prior to 1865 for the labor-intensive hemp industry.

(U.S. Census, 1850; Allen, James Lane, The Reign of Law, A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields, MacMillan Co., NY, 1900; Roffman, Roger, Ph.D. Marijuana as Medicine, Mendrone Books, WA, 1982.)

*This figure does not include the tens of thousands of smaller farms growing cannabis, nor the hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of family hemp patches in America; nor does it take into account that well into this century 80 percent of America's hemp consumption for 200 years still had to be imported from Russia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, etc.

Benjamin Franklin started one of America's first paper mills with cannabis. This allowed America to have a free colonial press without having to beg or justify the need for paper and books from England.

In addition, various marijuana and hashish extracts were the first, second or third most- prescribed medicines in the United States from 1842 until the 1890s. It's medicinal use continued legally through the 1930s for humans and figured even more prominently in American and world veterinary medicines during this time.

Cannabis extract medicines were produced by Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Tildens, Brothers Smith (Smith Brothers), Squibb and many other American and European companies and apothecaries. During all the time there was not one reported death from cannabis extract medicines, and virtually no abuse or mental disorders reported, except for first-time or novice users occasionally becoming disoriented or overly introverted.

(Mikuriya, Tod, M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers, Medi-Comp Press, CA; Cohen, Sidney & Stillman, Richard, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana, Plenum Press, Ny, 1976.)

World Historical Notes

"The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp, which began to be worked in the eight millennium (8,000 - 7,000 B.C.)" (The Columbia History of the World, 1981, page 54.)

The body of literature (i.e., archaeology, anthropology, philology, economy, history) pertaining to hemp is in general agreement that, at the very least:

From more than 1,000 years before the time of Christ until 1883 A.D., cannabis hemp - indeed, marijuana - was our planet's largest agricultural crop and most important industry, involving thousands of products and enterprises; producing the overall majority of Earth's fiber, fabric, lighting oil, paper, incense and medicines. In addition, it was a primary source of essential food oil and protein for humans and animals.

According to virtually every anthropologist and university in the world, marijuana was also used in most of our religions and cults as one of the seven or so most widely used mood-, mind-, or pain-altering drugs when taken as psychotropic, psychedelic (mind-manifesting or -expanding) sacraments.

Almost without exception, these sacred (drug) experiences inspired our superstitions, amulets, talismans, religions, prayers, and language codes. (See chapter 10 on "Religions and Magic.")

(Wasson, R., Gordon, Soma, Divine Mushroom of Immortality; Allegro, J.M., Sacred Mushrooms & the Cross, Doubleday, NY, 1969; Pliny; Josephus; Herodotus; Dead Sea Scrolls; Gnostic Gospels; the Bible; Ginsberg Legends Kaballah, c. 1860; Paracelsus; British Museum; Budge; Ency. Britannica,, "Pharmacological Cults;" Schultes & Wasson, Plants of the Gods, Research of R.E. Schultes, Harvard Botanical Dept.; Wm EmBoden, Cal State U., Northridge; et al.)

Great Wars were Fought to Ensure the Availability of Hemp

For example, the primary reason for the War of 1812 (fought by America against Great Britain) was access to Russian cannabis hemp. Russian hemp was also the principal reason that Napoleon (our 1812 ally) and his "Continental Systems" allies invaded Russia in 1812. (See Chapter 12, "The (Hemp) War of 1812 and Napolean Invades Russia.")

In 1942, after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines cut off the supply of Manila (Abaca) hemp, the U.S. Government distributed 400,000 pounds of cannabis seeds to American farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky, who produced 42,000 tons of hemp fiber annually until 1946 when the war ended.

Why Has Cannabis Hemp/Marijuana Been So Important in History?

Because cannabis hemp is, overall, the strongest, most-durable, longest-lasting natural soft-fiber on the planet. Its leaves and flower tops (marijuana) were - depending on the culture - the first, second or third most important and most-used medicines for two-thirds of the world's people for at least 3,000 years, until the turn of the century.

Botanically, hemp is member of the most advanced plant family on Earth. It is a dioecious (having male, female and sometimes hermaphroditic - male and female on the same plant), woody, herbaceous annual that uses the sun more efficiently than virtually any other plant on our planet, reaching a robust 12 to 20 feet or more in one short growing season. It can be grown in virtually any climate or soil condition on Earth, even marginal ones.

Hemp is, by far, Earth's premier, renewable natural resource. This is why hemp is so very important.

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Footnotes:

1. Clark, V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States, McGraw Hill, NY 1929, Pg. 34.

2. Ibid.

3. Diaries of George Washington; Writings of George Washington, Letter to Dr. James Anderson, May 26, 1794, vol. 33, p. 433, (U.S. govt. pub., 1931); Letters to his caretaker, Williams Pearce, 1795 & 1796; Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson's Farm Books, Abel, Ernest, Marijuana: The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, NY, 1980; M. Aldrich, et al.

==============================
"Who in the Arab world doesn't hate his neighbors, anyway?"
- Chris SpinnyFX Parsons, **Communications** Officer, Manly Council
==============================

Ships and Sailors

Ninety percent* of all ships' sails (since before the Phoenicians, from at least the 5th Century B.C. until long after the invention and commercialization of steam ships - mid- to late-19th century) were made from hemp.

*The other 10% were usually flax or minor fibers like ramie, sisal, jute, abaca.

(Abel, Ernest, Marijuana: The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, 1980; Herodotus, Histories, 5th Century B.C.; Frazier, Jack, The Marijuana Farmers, 1972; U.S. Agricultural Index, 1916-1982; USDA film, Hemp for Victory, 1942.)

The word "canvas" is the Dutch pronunciation (twice removed, from French and Latin) of the Greek word "Kannabis."*

*Kannabis - of the (Hellenized) Mediterranean Basin Greek language, derived from the Persian and earlier Northern Semitics (Quanuba, Kanabosm, Cana?, Kanah?) which scholars have now traced back to the dawn of the 6,000-year-old Indo-Semitic-European language family base of the Sumerians and Accadians. The early Sumerian/Babylonian word K(a)N(a)B(a), or Q(a)N(a)B(a) is one of man's longest surviving root words.1 (KN means cane and B means two - two reeds or two sexes.)

In addition to canvas sails, until this century virtually all of the rigging, anchor ropes, cargo nets, fishing nets, flags, shrouds, and oakum (the main protection for ships against salt water, used as a sealant between loose or green beams) were made from the stalk of the marijuana plant.

Even the sailors' clothing, right down to the stitching in the seamen's rope-soled and (sometimes) "canvas" shoes, was crafted from cannabis.*

*An average cargo, clipper, whaler, or naval ship of the line, in the 16th, 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries carried 50 to 100 tons of cannabis hemp rigging, not to mention the sails, nets, etc., and needed it all replaced every year or two, due to salt rot. (Ask the U.S. Naval Academy, or see the construction of the USS Constitution, a.k.a. "Old Ironsides," Boston Harbor.)

(Abel, Ernest, Marijuana, The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, 1980; Ency. Brittanica; Magoun, Alexander, The Frigate Constitution, 1928; USDA film Hemp for Victory, 1942.)

Additionally, the ships' charts, maps, logs, and Bibles were made from paper containing hemp fiber from the time of Columbus (15th Century) util the early 1900s in the Western European/American World, and by the Chinese from the 1st Century A.D. on. Hemp paper lasted 50 to 100 times longer than most preparations of papyrus, and was a hundred times easier and cheaper to make.

Incredibly, it cost more for a ship's hempen sails, ropes, etc. than it did to build the wooden parts.

Nor was hemp restricted to the briny deep...

Textiles & Fabrics

Until the 1820s in America (and until the 20th Century in most of the rest of the world), 80 percent of all textiles and fabrics used for clothing, tents, bed sheets and linens,* rugs, drapes, quilts, towels, diapers, etc. - and even our flag, "Old Glory," were principally made from fibers of cannabis.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years (until the 1830s), Ireland made the finest linens and Italy made the world's finest cloth for clothing with hemp.

*The 1893-1910 editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica indicate - and in 1938, Popular Mechanics estimated - that at least half of all the material that has been called linen was not made from flax, but from cannabis. Herodotus (c. 450 B.C.) describes the hempen garments made by the Thracians as equal to linen in fineness and that "none but a very experienced person could tell whether they were of hemp or flax."

Although these facts have been almost forgotten, our forebears were well aware that hemp is softer than cotton, more water absorbent than cotton, has three times the tensile strength of cotton and is m any times more durable than cotton.

In fact, when the patriotic, real-life, 1776 mothers of our present day blue-blood "Daughters of the American Revolution" (the DAR of Boston and New England organized "spinning bees" to clothe Washington's soldiers, the majority of the thread was spun from hemp fibers. Were it not for the historically forgotten (or censored) and currently disparaged marijuana plant, the Continental Army would have frozen to death at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

The common use of hemp in the economy of the early republic was important enough to occupy the time and thoughts of our first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who wrote in a Treasury notice from the 1790s, "Flax and Hemp: Manufacturers of these articles have so much affinity to each other, and they are so often blended, that they may with advantage be considered in conjunction. Sailcloth should have 10% duty..."

(Herndon, G.M., Hemp in Colonial Virginia, 1963; DAR histories; Able Ernest, Marijuana, the First 12,000 Years; also see the 1985 film Revolution with Al Pacino.)

The covered wagons went west (to Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Oregon, and California*) covered with sturdy hemp canvas tarpaulins,2 while ships sailed around the "Horn" to San Francisco on hemp sails and ropes.

*The original, heavy-duty, famous Levi pants were made for the California '49ers out of hempen sailcloth and rivets. This way the pockets wouldn't rip when filled with gold panned from the sediment.3

Homespun cloth was almost always spun, by people all over the world, from fibers grown in the "family hemp patch." In America, this tradition lasted from the Pilgrims (1620s) until hemp's prohibition in the 1930s.*

*In the 1930s, Congress was told by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics that many Polish-Americans still grew pot in their backyards to make their winter "long johns" and work clothes, and greeted the agents with s shotguns for stealing their next year's clothes.

The age and density of the hemp patch influences fiber quality. If a farmer wanted soft linen-quality fibers he would plant his cannabis close together.

As a rule of thumb, if you plant for medical or recreational use, you plant one seed per five square yards. When planted for seed: four to five feet apart.

(Univ. of Kentucky Agricultural. Ext. leaflet, March 1943.)

One-hundred-twenty to one-hundred eighty seeds to the square yard are planted for rough cordage or course cloth. Finest linen or lace is grown up to 400 plants to the square yard and harvested between 80 to 100 days.

(Farm Crop Reports, USDA international abstracts. CIBA Review 1961-62 Luigi Castellini, Milan Italy.)

By the late 1820s, the new American hand cotton gins (invented by Eli Whitney in 1793) were largely replaced by European-made "industrial" looms and cotton gins ("gin" is short for engine), because of Europe's primary equipment-machinery-technology (tool and die making) lead over America. Fifty percent of all chemicals used in American agriculture today are used in cotton growing. Hemp needs no chemicals and has few weed or insect enemies - except for the U.S.government and the DEA.

For the first time, light cotton clothing could be produced at less cost than hand retting (rotting) and hand separating hemp fibers to be handspun on spinning wheels and jennys.4

However, because of its strength, softness, warmth and long-lasting qualities, hemp continued to be the second most-used natural fiber* until the 1930s.

*In case you're wondering, there is no THC or "high" in hemp fiber. That's right, you can't smoke your shirt! In fact, attempting to smoke hemp fabric - or any fabric, for that matter - could be fatal!

After the 1937 Marijuana Tax law,new DuPont "plastic fibers," under license since 1936 from the German company I.G. Farben (patent surrenders were part of Germany's World War I reparation payments to America), replaced natural hempen fibers. (Some 30% of I.G. Farben, under Hitler, was owned and financed by America's DuPont.) DuPont also introduced Nylon (invented in 1935) to the market after they'd patented it in 1938.

(Colby, Jerry, DuPont Dynasties, Lyle Stewart, 1984.)

Finally, it must be noted that approximately 50% of all chemicals used in American agriculture today are used in cotton growing. Hemp needs no chemicals and has few weed or insect enemies - except for the U.S. government and the DEA.

(Cavendar, Jim, Professor of Botany, Ohio University, "Authorities Examine Pot Claims," Athens News, November 16, 1989.)

Fiber & Pulp Paper

Until 1883, from 75-90% of all paper in the world was made with cannabis hemp fiber including that for books, Bibles, maps, paper money, stocks and bonds, newspapers, etc. The Gutenberg Bible (in the 15th Century); Pantagruel and the Herb pantagruelion, Rabelais (16th Century); King James Bible (17th Century); the works of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas; Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" (19th Century); and just about everything else was printed on hemp paper.

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence (June 28, 1776) was written on Dutch (hemp) paper, as was the second draft completed on July 2, 1776. This was the document actually agreed to on that day and announced and released on July 4, 1776. On July 19, 1776, Congress ordered the Declaration be copied and engrossed on parchment (a prepared animal skin) and this was the document actually signed by the delegates on August 2, 1776. Hemp paper lasted 50 to 100 times longer than most preparations of papyrus, and was a hundred times easier and cheaper to make.

What we (the colonial Americans) and the rest of the world used to make all our paper from was the discarded sails and ropes by ship owners as scrap for recycling into paper.

The rest of our paper came from our worn-out clothes, sheets, diapers, curtains and rags* sold to scrap dealers made primarily from hemp and sometimes flax.

*Hence the term "rag paper."

Our ancestors were too thrifty to just throw anything away, so, until the 1880s, any remaining scraps and clothes were mixed together and recycled into paper.

Rag paper, containing hemp fiber, is the highest quality and longest lasting paper ever made. It can be torn when wet, but returns to its full strength when dry. Barring extreme conditions, rag paper remains stable for centuries. It will almost never wear out. Many U.S. government papers were written, by law, on hempen "rag paper" until the 1920s.5

It is generally believed by scholars that the early Chinese knowledge, or art, of hemp paper making (1st Century A.D. - 800 years before Islam discovered how, and 1,200 to 1,400 years before Europe) was one of the two chief reasons that Oriental knowledge and science were vastly superior to that of the West for 1,400 years. Thus, the art of long-lasting hemp papermaking allowed the Orientals' accumulated knowledge to be passed on, built upon, investigated, refined, challenged and changed, for generation after generation (in other words, cumulative and comprehensive scholarship).

The other reason that Oriental knowledge and science sustained superiority to that of the West for 1,400 years was that the Roman Catholic Church forbade reading and writing for 95% of Europe's people; in addition, they burned, hunted down, or prohibited all foreign or domestic books - including their own Bible! - for over 1,200 years under the penalty and often-used punishment of death. Hence, many historians term this period "The Dark Ages" (476 A.D. - 1000 A.D., or even until the Renaissance). (See Chapter 10 on Sociology.)

Rope, Twine & Cordage

Virtually every city and town (from time out of mind) in the world had an industry making hemp rope.6 Russia, however, was the world's largest producer and best-quality manufacturer, supplying 80 percent of the Western world's hemp from 1740 until 1940.

Thomas Paine outlined four essential natural resources for the new nation in Common Sense (1776); "cordage, iron, timber and tar."

Chief among these was hemp for cordage. He wrote, "Hemp flourishes even to rankness, we do not want for cordage." Then he went on to list the other essentials necessary for war with the British navy; cannons, gunpowder, etc.

From 70-90% of all rope, twine, and cordage was made from hemp until 1937. It was then replaced mostly by petrochemical fibers (owned principally by DuPont under license from Germany's I.G. Corporation patents) and by Manila (Abaca) Hemp, with steel cables often intertwined for strength - brought in from our "new" far-western Pacific Philippines possession, seized from Spain as reparation for the Spanish American War in 1898.

Art Canvas

Hemp is the perfect archival medium. 7

The paintings of Van Gogh, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, etc., were primarily painted on hemp canvas, as were practically all canvas paintings.

A strong, lustrous fiber, hemp withstands heat, mildew, insects and is not damaged by light. Oil paintings on hemp and/or flax canvas have stayed in fine condition for centuries.

Paints & Varnishes

For thousands of years, virtually all good paints and varnishes were made with hempseed oil and/or linseed oil.

For instance, in 1935 alone, 116 million pounds (58,000) tons*) of hempseed were used in America just for paint and varnish. The hemp drying oil business went principally to DuPont petrochemicals.8

*National Institute of Oilseed Products congressional testimony against the 1937 Marijuana Transfer Tax Law. As a comparison, consider that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), along with all America's state and local police agencies, claim to have seized for all of 1996, 700+ tons of American-grown marijuana; seed, plant, root, dirt clum and all. Even the DEA itself admits that 94 to 97 percent of all marijuana/hemp plants that have been seized and destroyed since the 1960s were growing completely wild and could not have been smoked as marijuana.

Congress and the Treasury Department were assured through secret testimony given by DuPont in 1935-37 directly to Herman Oliphant, Chief Counsel for the Treasury Dept., that hempseed oil could be replaced with synthetic petrochemical oils made principally by DuPont.

Oliphant was solely responsible for drafting the Marijuana Tax Act that was submitted to Congress.9 (See complete story in Chapter 4, "The Last Days of Legal Cannabis.")

Lighting Oil

Until about 1800, hempseed oil was the most consumed lighting oil in America and the world. From then until the 1870s, it was the second most consumed lighting oil, exceeded only by whale oil.

Hempseed oil lit the lamps of legendary Aladdin, Abraham the prohet, and in real life, Abraham Lincoln. It was the brightest lamp oil.

Hempseed oil for lamps was replaced by petroleum, kerosene, etc., after the 1859 Pennsylvania oil discovery and John D. Rockefeller's 1870-on national petroleum stewardship. (See chapter nine of "Economics.")

In fact, the celebrated botanist Luther Burbank stated, "The seed [of cannabis] is prized in other countries for its oil, and its neglect here illustrates the same wasteful use of our agricultural resources."

(Burbank, Luther, How Plants Are Trained To Work For Man, Useful Plants, P.F. Collier & Son Co., NY, Vol. 6, pg. 48.)

Biomass Energy

In the early 1900s, Henry Ford and other futuristic, organic, engineering geniuses recognized (as their intellectual, scientific heirs still do today) an important point - that up to 90 percent of all fossil fuel used inthe world today (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) should long ago have been replaced with biomass such as: cornstalks, cannabis, waste paper and the like.

Biomass can be converted to methane, methanol or gasoline at a fraction of the current cost of oil, coal, or nuclear energy - especially when environmental costs are factored in - and its mandated use would end acid rain, end sulfur-based smog, and reverse the Greenhouse Effect on our planet - right now!*

*Government and oil and coal companies, etc., will insist that burning biomass fuels is no better than using up our fossil fuel reserves, as far as pollution goes; but this is patently untrue.

Why? Because, unlike fossil fuels, biomass comes from living (not extinct) plants that continue to remove carbon dioxide pollution from our atmosphere as they grow, through photosynthesis. Furthermore, biomass fuels do not contain sulfur.

This can be accomplished if hemp is grown for biomass and then converted through pyrolysis (charcoalizing) or biochemical composting into fuels to replace fossil fuel energy products.*

*Remarkably, when considered on a planet-wide, climate-wide, soil-wide basis, cannabis is at least four and possibly many more times richer in sustainable, renewable biomass/cellulose potential than its nearest rivals on the planet - cornstalks, sugarcane, kenaf trees, ect. (Solar Gas, 1980; Omni, 1983; Cornell University; Science Digest, 1983; etc.).

Also see Chapter 9 on "Economics."

One product of pyrolysis, methanol, is used today by most race cars and was used by American farmers and auto drivers routinely with petroleum/methanol options starting in the 1920s, through the 1930s, and even into the mid-1940s to run tens of thousands of auto, farm and military vehicles until the end of World War II.

Methanol can even be converted to a high-octaine lead-free gasoline using a catalytic process developed by Georgia Tech University in conjunction with Mobil Oil Corporation.

Medicine

From 1842 through the 1890s, extremely strong marijuana (then known as cannabis extractums) and hashish extracts, tinctures and elixirs were routinely the second and third most-used medicines in America for humans (from birth, through childhood, to old age) and in veterinary medicine until the 1920s and longer. (See Chapter 6 on "Medicine," and Chapter 13 on the "19th Century.")

As stated earlier, for at least 3,000 years, prior to 1842, widely varying marijuana extracts (buds, leaves, roots, etc.) were the most commonly used and widely accepted majority of mankind's illnesses.

However, in Western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church forbade use of cannabis or any medical treatment, except for alcohol or blood letting, for 1200-plus years. (See Chapter 10 on "Sociology.")

The U.S. Pharmacopoeia indicated that cannabis should be used for treating such ailments as: fatigue, fits of coughing, rheumatism, asthma, delirium tremens, migraine headaches and the cramps and depressions associated with menstruation.(Professor William EmBoden, Professor of Narcotic Botany, California State University, Northridge.)

Queen Victoria used cannabis resins for her menstrual cramps and PMS, and her reign (1837-1901) paralleled the enormous growth of the use of Indian cannabis medicine in the English-speaking world.

In this century, cannabis research has demonstrated therapeutic value - and complete safety - in the treatment of many health problems including asthma, glaucoma, nausea, tumors, epilepsy, infection, stress, migraines, anorexia, depression, rheumatism, arthritis and possible herpes. (See Chapter 7, "Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis.")

Food Oils & Protein

Hempseed was regularly used in porridge, soups, and gruels by virtually all the people of the world up until this century. Monks were required to eat hempseeed dishes three times a day, to weave their clothes withit and to print their Bibles on paper made with its fiber.

(See Rubin, Dr. Vera, "Research Institute for the Study of Man;" Eastern Orthodox Church; Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana, Plenum Press, 1976; Abel, Ernest, Marijuana, The First 12,000 Years, Plenum Press, NY, 1980; Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

Hempseed can be pressed for its highly nutritious vegetable oil, which contains the highest amount of essential fatty acids in trhe plant kingdom. These essential oils are responsible for our immune responses and clear the arteries of cholesterol and plaque.

The byproduct of pressing the oil from the seed is the highest quality protein see cake. It can be sprouted (malted) or ground and baked into cakes, breads and casseroles. Marijuana seed protein is one of mankind's finest, most complete and available-to-the-body vegetable proteins. Hempseed is the most complete single food source for human nutrition. (See discussion of edistins and essential fatty acids, Chapter 8.)

Hempseed was - until the 1937 prohibition law - the world's number-one bird seed, for both wild and domestic birds. It was their favorite* of any seed food on the planet; four million pounds of hempseed for songbirds were sold at retail in the U.S. in 1937. Birds will pick hempseeds out and eat them first from a pile of mixed seed. Birds in the world live longer and breed more with hempseed in their diet, using the oil for their feathers and their overal health. (More in Chapter 8, "Hemp as a Basic World Food.")

*Congressional testimony, 1937; "Song birds won't sing without it," the bird food companies told Congress. Result; sterilized cannabis seeds continue to be imported into the U.S. from Italy, China and other countries.

Hempseed produces no observable high for humans or birds. Only the most minute traces of THC are in the seed. Hempseed is also the favorite fish bait in Europe. Anglers buy pecks of hempseed at bait stores, then thrashing for the hempseed and are caught by hook. No other bait is as effective, making hempseed generally the most desirable and most nutritious food for humans, birds and fish.

(Jack Herer's personal research in Europe.) (Frazier, Jack, The Marijuana Farmers, Solar Age Press, New Orleans, LA, 1972)

Building Materials & Housing

Because one acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp as 4.1 acres of trees,* hemp is the perfect material to replace trees for pressed board, particle board and for concrete construction molds.

*Dewey & Merrill, Bulletin #404, United States Dept. of Agriculture, 1916.

Practical, inexpensive fire-resistant construction material, with excellent thermal and sound-insulating qualities, is made by heating and compressing plant fibers to creat strong construction paneling, replacing dry wall and plywood. William B. Conde of Conde's Redwood Lumber, Inc. near Eugene, Oregon, in conjunction with Washington State University (1991-1993), has demonstrated the superior strength, flexibility, and economy of hemp composite building materials compared to wood fiber, even as beams.

Isochanvre, a rediscovered French building material made from hemp hurds mixed with lime, actually petrifies into a mineral state and lasts for many centuries. Archeologists have found a bridge in the south of France, from the Merovingian period (500-751 A.D.), built with this process. (See Chenevotte habitat of Rene, France in Appendix I.)

Hemp has been used throughout history for carpet backing. Hemp fiber has potential in the manufacture of strong, rot resistant carpeting - eliminating the poisonous fumes of burning synthetic materials in a house or commercial fire, along with allergic reactions associated with new synthetic carpeting.

Plastic plumbing pipe (PVC pipes) can be manufactured using renewable hemp cellulose as the chemical feedstocks, replacing non-renewable coal or petroleum-based chemical feedstocks.

So we can envision a house of the future built, plumbed, painted and furnished with the world's number-one renewable resource - hemp.

Smoking, Leisure & Creativity

The American Declaration of Independence recognizes the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Subseuqent court decisions have inferred the rights to privacy and choice from this, the U.S. Constitution and its Amendments.

Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation - from the writers of the world's religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists. These include Lewis Carroll and his hookah- smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, plus Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas; such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa; and the pattern continues right up to modern-day artists and musicians such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, the Doobie Brothers, Bob Marley, Jefferson Airplane, Willie Nelson, Buddy RIch, Country Joe & the Fish, Joe Walsh, David Carradine, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lola Falana, Hunter S. Thompson, Peter Tosh, the Grateful Dead, Cypress Hill, Sinead O'Connor, Black Crowes, etc.

Of course, smoking marijuana only enhances creativity for some and not for others.

But throughout history, various prohibition and "temperance" groups have attempted and ocasionaly suceeded in banning the preferred relaxational substances of others, like alcohol, tobacco or cannabis.

Abraham Lincoln responded to this kind of repressive mentality in December, 1840, when he said:

"Prohibition . . . goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes . . . A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Economic Stability, Profit & Free Trade

We believe that in a competitive market, with all facts known, people will rush to buy long-lasting, biodegradable "Pot Tops" or "Mary Jeans," etc., made from a plant without pesticides or herbicides. Some of the companies who have led the way with these products are Ecolution, Hempstead, Marie Mills, Ohio Hempery, Two Star Dog, Headcase, and in Germany, HanfHaus, et al.

It's time we put capitalism to the test and let the unrestricted market of supply and demand as well as "Green" ecologically consciousness decide the future of the planet.

A cotton shirt in 1776 cost $100 to $200, while a hemp shirt cost 50 cents to $1. By the 1830s, cooler, lighter cotton shirts were on par in price with the warmer, heavier, hempen shirts, providing a competitive choice.

People were able to choose their garments based upon the particular qualities they wanted in a fabric. Today we have no such choice.

The role of hemp and other natural fibers should be determined by the market of supply and demand and personal tastes and values, not by the undue influence of prohibition laws, federal subsidies and huge tariffs that keep the natural fabrics from replacing synthetic fibers.

Sixty years of government suppression of information has resulted in virtually no public knowledge of the incredible potential of the hemp fiber or its uses.

By using 100% hemp or mixing hemp with cotton, you will be able to pass on your shirts, pants and other clothing to your grandchildren. Intelligent spending could essentially replace the use of petrochemical synthetic fibers such as nylon and polyester with tougher, cheaper, cool, absorbent, breathing, biodegradable, natural fibers.

China, Italy and Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia currently make millions of dollars worth of sturdy hemp and hemp/cotton textiles - and could be making billions of dollars worth - annually.

These countries build upon their traditional farming and weaving skills, while the U.S. tries to force the extinction of this plant to prop up destructive synthetic technologies.

Even cannabis/cotton blend textiles were still not cleared for direct sale in the U.S. until 1991. The Chinese, for instance, were forced by tacit agreement to send us inferior ramie/cottons.

(National Import/Export Textile Company of Shangai, Personal communication with author, April and May, 1983.)

As the 1990 edition of The Emperor went to press, garments containing at least 55 percent cannabis hemp arrived from China and Hungary. In 1992, as we went to press, many different grades of 100 percent hemp fabric had arrived directly from China and Hungary. Now, in 1998, hemp fabric is in booming demand all over the world, arriving from Romania, Poland, Italy, Germany, et al. Hemp has been recognized as the hottest fabric of the 1990s by Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Paper, Detour, Details, Mademoiselle, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Der Spiegel, ad infinitum. All have run, over and over again, major stories onindustrial and nutritional hemp.

Additionally, hemp grown for biomass could fuel a trillion-dollar per year energy industry, while improving air quality and distributing the wealth to rural areas and their surrounding communities, and away from centralized power monopolies. More than any other plant on Earth, hemp holds the promise of a sustainable ecology and economy.

In Conclusion . . .

We must reiterate our original premise with our challenge to the world to prove us wrong:

If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect and stop deforestation;

Then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meeting all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time . . .

And that substance is - the same one that didi it all before - Cannabis Hemp . . . Marijuana!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes:

1. Oxford English Dictionary; Encyclopedia Brittanica, 11th edition, 1910; U.S.D.A. film, Hemp for Victory, 1942.

2. Ibid.

3. Levi-Strauss & Company of San Francisco, CA, author's personal communication with Gene McClaine, 1985.

4. Ye Olde Spinning Jennys and Wheels were principally used for fiber inthis order: cannabis hemp, flax, wool, cotton, and so forth.

5. Frazier, Jack, The Marijuana Farmers, Solar Age Press, New Orleans, LA, 1974; U.S. Library of congress; National Archives; U.S. Mint; etc.

6. Adams, James T., editor, Album of American History, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1944, g. 116.

7. Frazier, Jack, The Marijuana Farmers, Solar Age Press, New Orleans, LA, 1974; U.S. Library of Congress; National Archives.

8. Sloman, Larry, Reefer Madness, Grove, New York, NY, 1979, pg. 72.

9. Bonnie, Richard and Whitebread, Charles, The Marijuana Conviction, Univ. of Virginia Press, 1974.

When Hemp Saved George Bush's Life

One more example of the importance of hemp: Five years after cannabis hemp was outlawed in 1937, it was promptly reintroduced for the World War II effort in 1942.

So, when the young pilot, George Bush, baled out of his burning airplane after a battle over the Pacific, little did he know:

- Parts of his aircraft engine were lubricated with cannabis hempseed oil;

- 100 percent of his life-saving parachute webbing was made from U.S. grown cannabis hemp;

- Virtually all the rigging and ropes of the ship that pulled him in were made of cannabis hemp.

- The fire hoses on the ship (as were those in the schools he had attended) were woven from cannabis hemp; and,

- Finally, as young George Bush stood safely on the deck, his shoes' durable stitching was of cannabis hemp, as it is in all good leather and military shoes to this day.

Yet Bush has spent a good deal of his career eradicating the cannabis plant and enforcing laws to make certain that no one will learn this information - possibly including himself. . .

(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.
===================================

Why is our hempen history buried, adhok?

FBI + HOOVER + DU PONT + OIL INDUSTRY + ARTIFICIAL FIBRES (nylon etc)=

reefer madness aaaarrrrggghh

= criminal legislation against A PLANT, our history and
our future?

NY.LON = New York & London
=================

Guide to Rightwingnut Posers
by Cheryl Seal (updated 2/11/02)

[...]

Institutional/troublemaker poser example:

----"I've started reading through your site quite frequently. I appreciate evident effort you put into gathering non-mainstream news, and I'm glad to have a more information about current events."

----This is a missionary poser type hook. The reader is our "friend" and "admirer."

----"I read "Cheryl's Daily Diatribe", and I have to say, it's not misnamed, at least not on some of the points. I am concerned about the substance of some of your causes (but not your editorial contributions, they are certainly substantive). The example that caught my eye is global warming. Almost all of the press on global warming is political or regulatory in nature. Scientific results regarding this issue have not been prominently published in the mainstream press for years, and, on the few occasions where hard science is cited, it is usually misappropriated to suit the author's point-of-view."

----This poser wastes no time starting to spout the gospel according to the coal-industry sponsored "Greening Earth Society!" Of course, she doesn't bother questioning why scientific results (which abound) on global warming have not been published in the mainstream press. Do you get the sneaking feeling that her claim of having read my articles -- which deal constantly of late with how and why INDUSTRY-UNFRIENDLY INFORMATION IS SUPPRESSED -- is completely made up? She was probably forwarded this article by a fellow wingnut this week and had never clapped eyes on Unknown News before then.

----"From a scientific perspective, "global warming" is, at best, a speculative theory. Current warming trends have numerous possible explanations, some of which have better scientific underpinnings than the generic greenhouse gas explanation. This is one issue where public policy has raced far ahead of research, much less conclusive evidence. Even if global warming was regarded as fact, it is by no means obvious that a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions may have the desired effect."

----This propaganda line is take almost word for word from the stock stuff disseminated by "Greening Earth Society" and other fossil-fuel industry "global warming" sites. I don't think it ever occurs to posers that some of us might be familiar with the source of their corporate spiel -- if so you'd think they would try to be a little more creative and at least paraphrase a little!

----"H.L. Mencken guides us, 'For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.'"

----Yep, and the rightwingnuts seem to hit on it every time!

----"Therefore, bitter editorials about environmental or energy policies may fall wide of the target. It is almost certainly true that energy demand, and the associated waste heat, is as big a concern as emissions from energy production. Very few, if any, plans actually address THE DEMAND SIDE of the global warming issue."

----Gee, I wonder WHY that would be?? Could it possibly be that CORPORATE LOBBYISTS block every effort to create deterrents to overconsumption? Like the little trick of failing to levy ANY kind of deterring tax on SUV ownership, or McMansions (with their 12 foot ceilings and 3,000-foot plus spaces guzzling heating oil and gas).

----"What's worse, world fuel supplies, including natural gas and fissionable materials, are finite resources, and estimates from legitimate sources on fuel resources range from 30 years (even for Uranium) to 3000 years."

----All the more reason to shift to ANOTHER energy source NOW.

----"Clearly, this is a complex issue. The focus should be on continued research, and efforts to improve the situation should be broader in scope."

----Spoken like a true Bushite! In other words, we must stall, stall, stall and ****let the next generation deal with the problem!***

----"ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND PETROLEUM DEPLETION IN CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY: http://www.binghamton.edu/ econ/ wp00/ WP2001.pdf."

----This is the site the writer is affiliated with, although I must point out that her name is not on the cover page. If you click on this, you will discover that the site has absolutely no scientific connections -- it is an economics policy program! Sort of like Bush the MBA being enough of an INSTANT EXPERT OON GLOBAL WARMING TO TRASH KYOTO!

----"The DOE is even pessimistic: http://www.fe.doe.gov/ oil_gas/ reports/ accel_dep/ foreword.shtml."

----If I were the DOE I would be pessimistic too!

----"A doomsday site that actually bothers to support their editorials with citations: http://www.dieoff.org/."

----She intentionally forwards the reader to ONE OF THE LEAST SCIENTIFIC progressive global warming sites out there (MAINTAINED BY AN ECONOMIST). It has a mildly "hysterical liberal" feel to it referring to the energy crisis as FOSSILGATE, with its URL containing the words "DIEOFF." Every article there is stale, in terms of science, dating to 2000 or earlier. If this poser seriously wants some citations on the REALITY of global warming,, I will be glad to provide them -- about 1,500 of them, in fact, and those are just the articles I myself have read in the past four years, all from hard core science journals, none from "economics web sites" or even from nontechnical environmental mags like Whole Earth. But, if she really had been a regular reader of Unknown News and of my column, she would have know that my current "day job" is as a science abstractor and she probably would have modified her tactic.

----So, any of you out there who have had your own "poser sightings," send in your notes! We will keep adding to the "field guide!"

http://www.unknownnews.net/cs020602.html
======================================

"BONG ON" - chittered an Ad Hok hypothesist for reasons few could comprehend...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The late astronomer and popular science writer Carl Sagan has been revealed to have been an ardent marijuana smoker. An upcoming biography titled Carl Sagan: A Life, reveals that Sagan's best friend for 30 years was Dr Lester Grinspoon, Harvard psychiatrist and outspoken pro-pot advocate.

In his 1977 book The Dragons of Eden, Sagan discusses the pygmies, for whom marijuana is their only cultivated crop. He wrote that "it would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization."

In an anonymous essay he wrote for Grinspoon's book Marihuana Reconsidered Sagan explained that he first tried pot around 1961, "a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability."

In the essay he describes a wide variety of experiences and observations he had under the influence of pot. He explains that marijuana increased his appreciation and understanding of art and music, as well as his sensitivity to tastes, aromas, and sexual pleasure. He also describes how marijuana led to insights "on a wide range of social, political, philosophical and human biological topics."

"There is a myth about such highs," wrote Sagan, "that the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting those insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day. Some of the hardest work I've ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing.

"I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs."

Ann Druyan, Sagan's former wife, is a director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Sagan died of pneumonia in 1996. He was 62
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/63.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot.

That's here.

That's home.

That's us.

On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives.

The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilizations,
every king and peasant,
every young couple in love,
every hopeful child,
every mother and father,
every inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals,
every corrupt politician,
every superstar,
every supreme leader,
every saint and sinner in the history of our species,
lived there
on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot.

How frequent their misunderstandings,
how eager they are to kill one another,
how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is NO HINT that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. IT IS UP TO US. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

To me, it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly and compassionately with one another
and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot,
the only home we've ever known.

- Carl Sagan
http://www.seds.org/billa/psc/pbd.html
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

why is our hempen history buried, adhok?

defining frauds
by Durhis Mydicktion Thursday January 15, 2004 at 04:37 PM

It's very important that we know what Leon's talking about!

6 entries found for fraud.

fraud P Pronunciation Key (frôd)
n.

1) A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

2) A piece of trickery; a trick.

3a) One that defrauds; a cheat.
3b) One who assumes a false pose; an impostor.

4) One who disagrees with Leon.

5) One who misreads or misinterprets article written or referenced by Leon.

6) One who sometimes agrees with spinifex while simultaneously sometimes agreeing with Leon(?!)

What this stupid oil industry Parrot is trying to hide:

=======================
"But who in the Arab world doesn't hate his neighbors, anyway".
-Chris Parsons
=======================

In the face of such blatantly racist hatemongering, how is it that so many of us around here remain silent, changing the subject, or only raising our voices when we find a falderal of commentary from Chris upon which we can enthusiastically agree (eg: adhok - 'I actually agree with spiniFX Parsons on the issue of population growth)

Why don't you EVER have ANYTHING to say about the racist and defamatory hatemongering of our Manly Council Parrot, adhok?

Are these activities kosher with you?
=================================

and why is our hempen history buried?

Is a New Ice Age Under Way?

by Laurence Hecht

“Watch out, Al Gore. The glaciers will get you!” With that appended note, my friend, retired field geologist Jack Sauers, forwarded to me a report that should have been a lead item in every newspaper in the world. It was the news that the best-measured glacier in North America, the Nisqually on Mount Rainier, has been growing since 1931.

The significance of the fact, immediately grasped by any competent climatologist, is that glacial advance is an early warning sign of Northern Hemisphere chilling of the sort that can bring on an Ice Age. The last Little Ice Age continued from about 1400 to 1850. It was followed by a period of slight warming. There are a growing number of signs that we may be descending into another Little Ice Age—all the mountains of “global warming” propaganda aside.

Our current understanding of the long-term climate cycles shows that for the past 800,000 years, periods of approximately 100,000 years’ duration, called Ice Ages, have been interrupted by periods of approximately 10,000 years, known as Interglacials. (We are now about 10,500 years into the present Interglacial.)

What Causes Ice Ages
These cycles are not mere statistical correlations, as some Wall Street prognosticator working at the modern PC version of a ouija board might spin out. They are determined, with great scientific precision, to correlate with long-term, cyclical changes in the Earth’s orbital relationship to the Sun. Three fundamental orbital relationships are involved, each of which contributes to the amount of sunlight received in high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. When these cycles combine to reduce the incoming solar radiation (insolation) during summer months, over a number of years, the ice sheets which permanently cover Greenland, parts of Alaska, northern Canada, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, begin to advance.

At a certain point, the growth process becomes self-feeding, partly because the high reflectivity of ice and snow reduces the local temperature, partly for reasons that are not fully understood. The glaciers thicken and expand until they become continental ice sheets, one to two miles thick, creeping ever southward. Geological evidence shows that in the last Ice Age, the southern boundary of the continental ice sheet, known as a terminal moraine, stretched down the center of Long Island, through New York City, across New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Southern Illinois and Missouri, then up the Plains States through Montana and Washington State. All of this real estate was buried under one to two miles of ice.

Geologically and climatologically speaking, we are due for another such glacial advance. It might not happen in our lifetimes, but radical shifts in the climate of northern regions can take place suddenly, and in some places may already be taking place.

How to Look at ‘Global Warming’
A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry, anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands), is that the onset of an Ice Age is not marked by global cooling. In fact, the very same astronomical conditions which cause a cooling at high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, produce the opposite effect in the Southern Hemisphere, where there is much more ocean to absorb and retain the incoming solar radiation. Thus the global average temperature does not tell us anything of importance.

The geological requirements for an Ice Age are the presence of a large landmass around the Polar Circle and extending southward. A look at the globe, or world map, shows that those conditions exist in the Northern Hemisphere, but not in the Southern. Therefore, the important thing to look at is the climate conditions in northern and far northern regions. Some of the indicators:

• Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625
mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)

• A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1965 and 1990 Plant Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or 10°F, between 1965 and 1990.

• Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining since then.

• From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.

• Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere

On Nisqually
That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the largest single peak system in the United States.

In 1931, fearful that the receding glacier would provide insufficient runoff for their newly completed hydroelectric facility, Tacoma City Light began careful measurements of the glacier. Since the mid-1800s, the glacier had receded about 1 kilometer. Annual to semi-annual measurements, continued by the U.S. Geological Survey and private contractors for the National Park Service, provide the longest continuous series of glacier measurements in North America.

The details are described in a report by government specialists, which appeared in the September 2000 issue of Washington Geology:

“The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between 1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters of altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured during intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17 meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during the first decade of the 21st century.”

That’s the story from Mount Rainier. Retired geologist Sauers, who has been observing conditions in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington for a lifetime, says “I’m preparing for an Ice Age.” Perhaps we all should.

Laurence Hecht is Editor-in-Chief of 21st Century.

quote:
=====================
A very important thing to understand in interpreting all the swill that issues daily from the Global Warming mill (really the anti-industry, anti-population lobby, headed and pumped with money by the Royal Consort Prince Philip, and former Nazi Party member Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands),
=====================

Why is our hempen history buried, adhok?