Attention pot-smoking environmentalists: your grass is not green.
Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has released a report that indicates indoor production of marijuana uses 1% of the nation’s electricity consumption each year. That means smoking one joint is the same as burning a 100-watt light bulb for 17 hours.
According to the report, the average California home grower uses as much electricity cultivating their crop as they would to power thirty refrigerators (that’s a lot of storage for your munchie fixes…). Pot grown indoors creates 3000 times its weight in carbon emissions, or 70 gallons of diesel fuel per pot plant.
The study does not condone the cultivation of marijuana, but does note that outdoor growing would eliminate some of the energy consumption. It also speaks to how the criminalization of pot contributes to the inefficient energy practices by forcing growers to set up high-tech, energy zapping odor suppression and ventilation systems.
Some, like Ariel Schwartz of Fast Company, believe marijuana should be legalized and grown using the same models of efficiency that commercial agriculture has adopted in recent years. Schwartz believes that pot should be legalized so consumers can “cast a critical eye on its energy usage.”
