
Commercial marijuana production, both legal and illegal, has drawn increasing criticism on environmental grounds, but one Florida man wants to use another variety of the plant to make a carbon-neutral car that would help the environment.
Bruce Michael Dietzen of Renew Sports Cars in Florida has built a stylish sportster with a body made of cannabis hemp, marijuana's country cousin whose cultivation is an environmentally friendly means of producing biomass fuels, paper, foods and fiber-based industrial products. This "green machine" is made from three plies of woven hemp, making it lighter than cars made with fiberglass bodies.
"The body of the car uses about 100 pounds of woven hemp," Dietzen explained.
The car is also surprisingly strong. Dieztsen estimates the body is at least 10 times more dent-resistant than steel.
Dietzen said he was inspired to create the hempmobile after learning about Henry Ford's 1941 "hemp car." The vehicle was real enough and actually ran on hemp fuel, but hemp only constituted about 10 percent of the material in the paneling. The rest was pine fiber, straw and ramie, the stuff ancient Egyptians used to encase mummies.
Dietzen's sports car also runs on biofuel, which will allow it to have a much lower carbon footprint than even electric-powered cars when it goes into mass production. Although Diezten is taking pre-orders, it's anyone's guess as to when that will be. He said he sunk $200,000 into making his prototype.
Like the pot people like to smoke, cannabis hemp is classified as cannabis sativa, even though it contains negligible levels of the high-producing cannabinoid THC and won't get anyone stoned. It's cultivated for fibers, seeds and oils, not psychoactive flowers. Cannabis hemp and recreational marijuana are the same species of plant, just as Rottweilers and Chihuahuas are both species of dog. They may be in the same family, but no one is going to mistake one for the other.
Except, that is, for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The drug control agency maintains that cannabis hemp is marijuana and is thus illegal under federal law. It formally considers hemp cultivation to be the same criminal offense as marijuana cultivation. The DEA even attempted to ban the import of hemp products, only to be shot down by the federal courts a decade ago.
But Congress has been nibbling at the edges of the hemp cultivation ban. The 2014 Agricultural Act defined hemp as having less than 3 percent THC and authorized research crops in states that allowed them. Language is included in the 2016 Omnibus Appropriations Act that bars the expenditure of federal funds to interfere with hemp production in line with the 2014 act.
Florida, home of Bruce Michael Dietzen, isn't one of those states.
"Hemp is still illegal to grow so I had to import the woven material all the way from China because we still don't have the facilities that can make hemp fabrics," the auto-enthusiast said. "Cannabis hemp is still considered a dangerous drug according to the government. It's considered as dangerous as heroin or cocaine—it's insane!"
The DEA considers hemp to be marijuana, which is a Schedule I controlled substance, along with heroin. Even cocaine, a Schedule II drug, is considered less dangerous than hemp. But change is on its way and Dietzen wants to put you behind the wheel.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Legalization of Industrial Hemp in America Is a No-Brainer, Says New Patagonia Film
Ultimate Family Bike Raises More Than $1 Million in 1 Day of Kickstarter Campaign
By Kimberly Nicole Pope
During this year's Davos Agenda Week, leaders from the private and public sectors highlighted the urgent need to halt and reverse nature loss. Deliberate action on the interlinked climate and ecological crises to achieve a net-zero, nature-positive economy is paramount. At the same time, these leaders also presented a message of hope: that investing in nature holds the key to ensuring economic and social prosperity and resilience.
- 16 Essential Books About Environmental Justice, Racism and ... ›
- 10 Best Books On Climate Change, According to Activists - EcoWatch ›
- 14 Inspiring New Environmental Books to Read During the ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Brett Wilkins
While some mainstream environmental organizations welcomed Tuesday's introduction of the CLEAN Future Act in the House of Representatives, progressive green groups warned that the bill falls far short of what's needed to meaningfully tackle the climate crisis—an existential threat they say calls for bolder action like the Green New Deal.
<div id="25965" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="6116a1c2b1b913ad51c3ea576f2e196c"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366827205427425289" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">BREAKING: Rep @FrankPallone just released his CLEAN Future Act — which he claims to be an ambitious bill to combat… https://t.co/M7nR0es196</div> — Friends of the Earth (Action) (@Friends of the Earth (Action))<a href="https://twitter.com/foe_us/statuses/1366827205427425289">1614711974.0</a></blockquote></div>
<div id="189f0" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="aa31bacec80d88b49730e8591de5d26d"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366863402912657416" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">The CLEAN Future Act "fails to grasp the fundamental truth of fighting climate change: We must stop extracting and… https://t.co/yREn6Qx9tn</div> — Food & Water Watch (@Food & Water Watch)<a href="https://twitter.com/foodandwater/statuses/1366863402912657416">1614720605.0</a></blockquote></div>
- Biden Plans to Fight Climate Change in a New Way - EcoWatch ›
- Bipartisan Climate Bill Highlights Forest Restoration, Conservation ... ›
Trending
- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>- Offshore Wind Power Is Ready to Boom. Here's What That Means for ... ›
- American Skyscrapers Kill an Estimated 600 Million Migratory Birds ... ›
Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.