Is the whole carbon foot printing debate a clever distraction for the petro-chemical industry, especially cotton and soy irrigators? Why? Because there is virtually nil debate over the source of up to 50 per cent of carbon emissions worldwide – the building and construction industry.
The answer is fairly simple – industrial hemp, which locks up CO2 and in many cases negates irrigation entirely, as it will flourish with a decent rainfall, particularly on the coast or in high-rainfall months in the west.
Hemp petrifies when mixed with lime, eliminating the petro-chemical processes needed to make cement, concrete bricks etc. As well, bricks are six times lighter and stronger than clay bricks. A $20 million English brewery warehouse made of hemp has a constant temperature and reduces heating bills enormously. Hemp’s insulation properties are far superior to any other product I could find when consulting for Australia’s biggest environmental farms.
Southern Cross University’s Dr Keith Bolton made bricks from a sop crop he grew on Byron Council’s sewage farm at Bangalow years ago. Please kids, Google sites under industrial hemp, building with hemp, or hemp versus cotton. Our politicians and lobbyists want to keep you in the dark. Find out how the professor of construction and building at the University of NSW has patented a hemp masonry formulae.
France builds around 300 hemp houses a year. British Professor Tom Wooley and leading English architects are adamant about hemp’s pre-eminence over masonry. Its wise use in earthquake affected areas could be of immediate benefit for all mankind. For decades now, universities in Canada and Wisconsin have produced hemp timbers, about three times lighter than steel RSJs and at least double the strength, using natural glues and primitive pressure crushes.
Our politicians and especially the cotton, soy and building industries know this, but have deliberately confused the argument with marijuana. Yet the illicit drug industry hates industrial hemp, with nil psychotropic effect, because pollen cross contaminates marijuana, making it totally impotent within three generations.
Also industrial hemp has proven itself in literally several hundred different industries from brick making to human and cattle food sources over thousands of years. This archives many polluting industries. In regards CO2 and food security, industrial hemp is easily the planet’s central answer. It has the full range of essential oils for human health.
Why should it be buried by legislators, and vested interests? Because we are a corrupt society. To be democratic, we need social media campaigns to shake off the widespread greed virus.
Tell the Government and Mr Windsor to immediately include industrial hemp in carbon emission debates and legislate for government building contracts to emphasise hemp bricks, biodegradable plastics, “timbers” panelling etc in contracts – thus creating demand. What about hemp plastic bags which would stop the environmental damage of landfills? Come back Ted Mack and lead the fight.
Would Tony Windsor, the champion of industrial hemp legislation when first elected to the NSW Parliament in 1988, please explain why he has favoured irrigators on the Murray Darling when hemp is the only real alternative? Surely environmental flows need a better proposition than the unwholesome “getting the balance right” – for cotton growers.
Cotton cannot hold a candle to hemp varieties which produce silken product, both on economic and environmental grounds.
Cotton’s carbon footprint and irrigation costs are massive, whereas hemp actually reduces carbon and saves the country millions.
Nevertheless, cotton, like the tobacco monster, has jailed hemp, the elephant in the paddock for over a centrury. Hemp would squash cotton and lock up carbon emissions, while keeping farmers economically happy.
Now local newspapers at the head of the Murray Darling, such as The Armidale Express push propaganda eg page 1, 30.3.2011 (Truth tour checks cotton farming), and 27.5.2011 (Campaigner for a kinder environment).
I hope John and Ada Seery of Sappa, Moree told their gullible tourists what happened to Humphrey’s lagoon, on the highway, opposite their property and the legacy the Australian taxpayer for generations will have to endure because of these cotton “pioneers”.
Children are the victims of agri-politicis so I ask them to search Google. There have been innumerable progressions in industrial hemp uses over the past two decades. To me it is the absolute solution to irrigation problems. Mr Windsor could kill the Murray Darling, as cotton growers did on several famous American watercourses, where not even a trickle reaches the sea.
Australian agriculture clearly is a cot case, with wheat corruption, live animal torture and irrigation destruction of the environment.
Today’s challenge for Ms Gillard and Mr Windsor is to give the young people of Australia a future. “Getting the balance right” is weasel talk for blocking industrial hemp. I hope some social networker picks up this challenge. Our democracy has been for too long controlled from the shadows.
Bob Cummins, Armidale
