“Well, what would you say if there was such a plant that could substitute for all wood pulp paper, all fossil fuels, would make most of our fibers naturally, make everything from dynamite to plastic, grows in all 50 states and that one acre of it would replace 4.1 acres of trees, and that if you used about 6% of the U.S. land to raise it as an energy crop, even on our marginal lands, this plant would produce all 75 quadrillion billion BTUs needed to run America each year? Would that help save the planet?”
...
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Hemp.”
...
“Well, Mr. Herer, did you know that hemp is also marijuana?”
“Yes, of course I know, I’ve been writing about it for about 40 hours a week for the past 17 years.”
“Well, you know marijuana’s illegal, don’t you? You can’t use it.”
“Not even to save the world?”
“No. It’s illegal”, he sternly informed me. “You cannot use something illegal.”
In the US, all I can say is write your senators, house representative, and donate to campaigns with sensible policies. It does seem closer to reality now than ever before now.
Plants require water. Yes we can solve the plastic problem by growing more plants, but then we will have a water problem as plants, heavy industry, chemical production, recycling (which uses a lot of water), power production (most use steam), live stock, and human water consumption all compete.
I mean I guess we could melt the ice caps for more water...
I think their point is more "We're already running out of water, aquifer depletion is a thing on multiple continents and there are now cities that have officially run out of fresh water. Adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall, is just going to worsen another dire issue".
> adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall
Hemp (referenced in a sibling thread) is known as weed because it is drought tolerant and often requires less water than non invasive species. Kudzu and Bamboo are also invasive species that are drought tolerant when compared to most and even natural land uses.
You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.
>You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.
The water that effectively stays in a closed system and can likely be treated on-site for nearly immediate reuse? The water that doesn't largely evaporate (70 percent of the annual precipitation returns to the atmosphere by evaporation, I assume water from irrigation is still several tens of percent) and cause soil erosion?
It takes 180 L of water to produce 1 kg of plastic and 302-492 L for 1kg of hemp based on a quick Google query.