Apple, Tesla and The Big Green Battery Factory

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Tesla unveils $5 billion plan for massive ‘Gigafactory’ to manufacture batteries

In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we’re planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead.

When I read the above press release from Tesla, another great American company came to mind: Apple.

Both companies are heavily invested in battery dependent mobile technology and have been pushing the envelope in sustainable factory technologies. Apple has the cash to build an independent battery factory anywhere in the world, but partnering with their Palo Alto neighbor Tesla Motors would multiply efficiencies for both companies.

Even if it’s just wishful thinking as a fan of both companies, the fact that Tesla Motors is planning to follow the Apple model of renewable energy manufacturing is another clear indication that the world is moving away from the  status quo of the Fossil Fuel Economy.

The petrochemical industries have peaked and continue to shrink, but they’re not going quietly, as the Koch brothers and their oil soaked allies in congress prove. On the bright side, they are dying like the toxic, bloated, expensive and unnecessary industries they are, and the rest of us will be far better off as fossil fuels become a thing of the past.

Alternative energy is everywhere, use it wisely!

GMOs vs Healthy Hemp Food

Green Festival LA: Interview with John Roulac GMO Inside

John W. Roulac is the CEO of the health food company Nutiva, and they are a great example of the future and potential of hemp foods, along with the other Organic and non-GMO foods that are becoming more and more popular everyday.

One of the great things about trying to convince people that hemp is good food, is the fact that most hemp products really do taste great. People want to eat better, so they feel better, and live longer, and they want that food to taste better while they’re doing it.

There is no question that we will see the hemp foods market grow hand-in-hand other organic and non-GMO foods. As the amount of mass-produced over-processed Food Products shrink, they will be replaced by fresh, locally grown crops. Local farmers won’t be shipping their flash frozen crops across the sea, they’ll be driving them down the road to the local market where their neighbors will buy them.

5 Uses For Hemp

Top 5 Most Innovative Uses For Hemp

While this ancient crop has recently started to gain popularity around the world, it still hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

But as more countries start to see the benefits of this incredibly eco-friendly crop, a lot of cool R&D has been happening behind the scenes.

Hemp is exploding in popularity, but most people still have no idea what it can do. This article list just 5 of its many thousand uses.

Gimmie Some Water

Is solar-powered desalination answer to water independence for California?

From a sustainability perspective, the upside of the technology is huge. The US federal government is currently pumping in about seven million-acre feet of water into California’s Central Valley every year. Replacing a “meaningful percentage” of that figure – say, 20%-30% – would be enough to have a dramatic impact on securing water security for the area, says WaterFX’s Mandell.

The implications for sustainable agriculture are also vast. After a successful proof of concept stage, Sundrop is now building a 20-acre greenhouse, which promises to produce 2.8m kg of tomatoes and 1.2m kg of pepper a year. As well as making desert land productive, Sundrop maintains that its approach reduces pesticide use, cuts food miles and results in better tasting produce.

The arguments from a climate-change perspective appear especially attractive. Saudi Arabia’s 30 or so desalination plants, for instance, currently use about 300,000 barrels of crude oil equivalent a day. The trend in other Gulf countries, as well as in Algeria and Libya, is similar. “The status quo is not sustainable,” concludes the World Bank, which describes the elimination of fossil fuel use in desalination as “critical”.

My home state of California is proudly leading the way to a sustainable future by building on our homegrown agriculture and technology industries.

The next step will be using the vast power of the pacific ocean for tidal energy and clean water via solar desalinization.

If its good enough for Saudi Arabia, it’s good enough for America!

Too Legit To Quit

Hemp growing going legit after decades-long ban

Hemp’s return to legitimacy could clear the way for U.S. farmers to compete in an industry currently dominated by China. Even though it hasn’t been grown in the U.S., the country is one of the fastest-growing hemp markets.

In 2011, the U.S. imported $11.5 million worth of legal hemp products, up from $1.4 million in 2000. Most of that growth was seen in hemp seed and hemp oil, which finds its way into granola bars and other products.

“This is big,” said Eric Steenstra, president of Vote Hemp, a Washington-based group that advocates for the plant’s legal cultivation. “We’ve been pushing for this a long time.”

Legalized growing of hemp had congressional allies from both ends of the political spectrum. Democrats from marijuana-friendly states have pushed to legalize hemp cultivation, as have Republicans from states where the fibrous plant could be a profitable new crop.

“We are laying the groundwork for a new commodity market for Kentucky farmers,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a statement. McConnell was a lead negotiator on the inclusion of hemp in the farm bill.

Legal industrial hemp is happening, but the DEA and energy companies are doing everything they can to prolong the inevitable energy revolution because it’s in their own self-interests. 

Fortunately for the rest of the American people, the cost of continued prohibition is too high, and the economic benefit is too big, to continue our misguided war on renewable resources.

Tell your congressional reps to stop the Federal government’s war on American farmers and let them grow the food, fiber and fuel we need to thrive as a nation, just like our founding fathers did.

Use War Money to Take Care of Veterans

Vermont’s Senator Sanders Is Right: Use War Money to Take Care of Veterans

The National Journal notes that 18 military and veterans organizations have backed Sanders’ proposal, and Sanders said he believes it will soon have the support of every major veterans organization in the country.

Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have long argued that we fundamentally undercount the cost of war if we exclude the cost of caring for veterans afterwards. The future cost of caring for veterans is a fundamental cost of war, and honest budgeting would include it in accounting for war cost.

In addition to providing direct benefit to veterans, Sanders’ proposal, if enacted, would help right a fundamental and dangerous wrong: pretending that caring for veterans is not a cost of war. You can urge Congress and the president to support Senator Sanders’ proposal here.

Veterans are the only cost of war that matters, and I think the trillion dollar a year military budget can afford 3 billion a year for the veterans who fought for that military.

Sign the petition and tell the Dept. of Defense to support our troops instead of simply dumping them back onto the streets of America and leaving them at the mercy of corrupt penny pinching politicians who would rather protect corporate welfare then the men and women who protect us.

Just Say No To Coal

Hemp growers cooperatives’ report touts crop’s benefits to coal

Hemp plus coal could equal economic prosperity for Appalachia, according to a new white paper released Wednesday by the Kentucky and West Virginia hemp growers cooperatives.

“It’s about stimulating the hemp economy,” said David Hadland, president of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Cooperative Association and a member of the Kentucky Industrial Hemp Commission. “The public needs to know that hemp is viable, and that hemp is not marijuana. This is just another example of its use.”

The cooperatives advocate blending dry hemp “hurds” with Appalachian high-sulphur coal to reduce emissions at power plants.

“Our results show that hemp biomass is a promising feedstock for power co-generation, a notion supported by recent techno-economic studies,” wrote the study’s authors, Katherine M. Andrews, Alex Donesky, Roger Ford and J. Eric Mathis. “The introduction of industrial hemp as a biomass energy feedstock can improve the economics of co-firing due to adaptability, high per-acre yield, and potential to be grown on post-mining land and reclamation sites.”

The coal chemical spill in West Virginia is just one more example of a toxic industry that could eventually be replaced by industrial hemp.

Whether burning hemp in power plants or pellet burning stoves, it is far cleaner and safer than the petrochemical sources we are currently forced to use, not to mention all the dangerous chemicals used in the processing of those toxic petrochemical products, and the only reason we continue to protect these toxic industries is the misguided belief that there are no other alternatives.

 

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/01/08/3023589/hemp-growers-cooperatives-report.html#storylink=cpy

Stop The Insanity

Higher Hopes for Hemp

Our insane ban on growing hemp has nothing to do with drugs. It’s about money. The industries that stand to lose business if hemp is legalized — the cotton, timber, and biofuel industries, to name a few — don’t want the competition.

Do we have a free market or not? We should legalize hemp and let the chips fall where they may. The industries that stand to lose if hemp is legalized have used drug hysteria to their advantage for long enough.

If you believe in a free market economy, state’s rights, and a government of the people, by the people, and for the people: You should also know that the “Drug War” is a $20 billion-a-year farce that does nothing but perpetuate our dependence on the expensive and toxic petrochemical status quo, while giving police and the DEA free range to destroy the lives of innocent citizens.

And if you believe all that, you are among the MAJORITY of Americans who think the the Feds should spend their time (and our money) helping the American people, instead of hurting us.

Stop the madness and make 2014 the Year of HEMP!

Hemp Times Are A-Changin’

From HEMP TIMES Archives: Graham Nash Interview  (1998)

“My hemp awareness goes back about four years now. You do a little research and find out about George Washington – all the usual stuff – that our first President had hemp farms, that hemp used to provide 80 percent of our rope for the shipping industry and 80 percent of our paper. If you go further, you find out about how hemp helps the land, and how toxic growing cotton is.”

“Unfortunately, the main obstacle that hemp has to overcome is its association with smoking marijuana. The whole industry has had to deal with a public-relations problem that is over fifty years in the making.”

In a 1998 interview, music legend Graham Nash explained his support for industrial hemp by summing up its history and potential, then finished with one clear step forward: “People should learn to distinguish propaganda from fact.”

The “mainstream media” often attacks celebrities for speaking their mind and challenging the status quo, but why should celebrities have any less right to ask the questions that affect all of our lives than the rest of us do? Indeed, attacks on celebrities “who don’t know their place” are just another attack on all of us “regular people” who are told to sit down, shut up, and trust the politicians, pundits, and corporate spokespeople to decide what’s best or us.

How’s that working’ out for us so far? And what do we do when “the accepted truth” is found to be lies?

Filling that void between Drug War Propaganda and the Actual Historical Truth about hemp prohibition (and its effect on American farmers and our economy) is exactly why I started this website in 2001 (back when the truth about hemp and its huge potential as a cash crop, was still considered a hippie pipe dream). For decades informed celebrities like Willie Nelson and Woody Harrelson have encouraged people on all sides of the political divide to learn the facts for themselves, and despite attacks from the Powers That Be, the tide has finally turned.

The truth is out there for all to see, and political leaders on both sides of the aisle are finally supporting hemp as a true bipartisan solution to many of our nation’s problems. The only people that oppose it are those who are trying to protect their own self-interests, like DEA agents, the petrochemical industry, and Oil War profiteers. But their day is done. While they cling to the past and hope nobody else learns the truth, the rest of us are moving confidently toward a better future.

So, who’s side are you on? The American people or the jack-booted thugs and multi-national corporations that profit from the Drug War and our forced dependence on foreign oil?

The choice is yours, so choose wisely.

 

 

The Hemp War of 1812

The Emperor Wears No Clothes - JackHerer.com

John Quincy Adams (later to become President), who was American Consul at St. Petersburg, in 1809 noted:

“As many as 600 clipper ships, flying the American flag, in a two-week period, were in Kronstadt” (the Port of St. Petersburg, once called Leningrad in the former USSR) loading principally cannabis hemp for England (illegally) and America, where quality hemp is also in great demand.

The War of 1812 is a mystery to most Americans, because American schools aren’t allowed to mention hemp, which was at the center of the conflict.

Simply put, hemp for rope and sails was the most important natural resource of the day, and the best hemp came from Russia. When France cut off Britain’s access to Russian hemp, the British forced American sailers to be their middle men (under threat of impressment). It was this “Interference in American trade and sovereignty” that President Madison cited as his chief justification for declaring war.

For more info read Jack Herer’s book (linked above) and his source book “America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon.”