Earth Day 2008: Hemp for Food and Fuel!

On this weekend before Earth Day, with celebrations worldwide, we find ourselves gripped globally by a food shortage caused in large part by rising fuel costs. Adding to this problem is the increasingly serious population growth. Indeed, I am reminded during this crisis of two pertinent subjects: Firstly, Paul Ehrlich, who wrote The Population Bomb in 1968, but who was roundly assailed and dismissed at the time. Unfortunately, he is being proved correct, as common sense would have told us all along. The second subject that keeps popping up provides a major solution to the world's food and energy crises. It's been sitting there all along, vilified and suppressed by the ruling elite, who appear to care not a fig for the world's poor and suffering but who only seem to want to make their fortunes off polluting and destroying the earth. What I'm talking about is the prohibition of one of the world's most versatile plants: Hemp or cannabis.

The history of hemp is long and varied, and need not be reproduced here but can be viewed in part in the videos included here. Suffice it to say that, rather than for "moral" purposes having to do with the medicinal or recreational uses of one strain of cannabis, the prohibition of hemp has largely revolved around the desire by the ruling elite to horde and profit off of the resources they have virtually monopolized since the 1930s and earlier. Indeed, in my mind one of the greatest criminals in history is William Randolph Hearst, who, along with his "hired Anslinger," so to speak, almost singlehandedly managed to destroy the American hemp industry. Now, much of the environmental destruction can be placed squarely on the heads of this tiny minority of monopolizers. With hemp, there would have been little need for the oil industry and its attendant globe-destroying pollution and degradation. Another benefit of hemp production and the non-necessity of Middle Eastern oil would have been the lack of funding for "radical" Islamic extremists whose stated goal is total global domination, using billions of petrodollars currently at their disposal.

Instead of a peaceful, clean and well-nourished planet and populace, we are currently poised on the edge of the abyss from which many millions will never recover. The prohibition of hemp constitutes one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever committed. Millions of human beings will now die, millions more will be enslaved under a totalitarian system of government, and the suffering will go on, all for the want of a plant that has more uses than can be listed here.

The people in power who have upheld the criminal hemp prohibition should be ashamed, but I fear that they have no conscience at all - an assertion constantly validated by their actions. If the ruling elite cannot make massive amounts of money off of something, it will not only fall by the wayside, it will be deliberately kicked there. And that relegation is what has happened to hemp, a true gift of nature that could still solve many of our problems globally - if these powermongering sociopaths will step out of the way.

Will humankind wake up and make the necessary changes now that it faces an appalling crisis of a magnitude never before seen? I certainly hope so.

Lift the hemp ban now!

(In 1992, when Jerry Brown was running for President, I stood up at one of his press conferences and asked him, "Isn't it time to look to hemp to solve many of the world's problems?" He blanched, and one of his cameramen groaned and removed the camera from me. Brown deflected the question, answering only my previous question about his international policies. That's the sort of fearful environment we've lived in that has now led us to this atrocious mess.)

Study: U.S. Hemp Ban Hurts Environment, Economy

Hemp Used to Clean Radioactivity

(If you can't see the videos below, try opening this page in Internet Explorer.)

Hemp for Food



Hemp for Victory!



Hemp - The Environmentally Sustainable Alternative



Hemp for Biodiesel Fuel



Hemp to Solve Global Warming



Ron Paul & Cannabis