The jokes practically write themselves: A new study by a U.S. government energy analyst (working on his own time) found that marijuana cultivation is a huge power suck, and a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. How not-green is weed? The study's author, Evan Mills of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, estimates that before anyone even smokes it, pot growing uses 1 percent of U.S. electricity and creates 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. That means each joint equals two pounds of carbon emissions. What does this mean for the green movement?
Hippies ruin everything: Mills may have "a puritanical streak," but it's hard to deny his conclusion, says Andrew Orlowski in The Register. "Stoners are helping destroy the planet." Clearly, there's a reason household energy use jumped 50 percent in California's Humboldt County after medical pot was legalized in 1996: Grow lights, climate control, and other special indoor-growing equipment uses a lot of juice.
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