Outdoor Growing Operations

The outdoor cultivation of cannabis includes draining and polluting streams, degrading watersheds, poisoning the environment, killing wildlife, and threatening investigators.

In California, illegal cannabis is being grown on thousands of acres of national and state forests and parks, including Stanislaus National Forest adjacent to Yosemite National Park in Calaveras County.

Siskiyou County is in the Shasta Cascade region along the Oregon border.  The county is the site of the central section of the Siskiyou Trail, which runs between California’s Central Valley and the Pacific Northwest.  The Siskiyou Trail followed Native American footpaths and was extended by Hudson’s Bay Company trappers in the 1830s.  Its length was increased by the “Forty-Niners” during the California Gold Rush.

Illegal marijuana is often controlled by the same drug lords, cartels, and gangs who sell cocaine, heroin, and opioids.  These growing operations are often tended by immigrants who are trafficked and used as slaves, guarded with high-powered weapons as the thugs protect their compounds.

  • Cannabis cultivation, legal and illegal, is polluting the environment.
  • Legal and illegal growers use large amounts of pesticides, insecticides, toxic spray glue, and other chemicals and fertilizers banned in the U.S.
  • Some growers illegally divert streams and discharge polluted waste into waterways, thereby poisoning the water supply, fish, and animals.
  • Growers clear-cut trees and excavate forests illegally, thereby creating fragmentation, stream modification, soil erosion, and landslides that reduce wildlife habitats.  ESPM
  • Several years of droughts combined with illegal commercial cannabis growth is causing ground water to dry up.  The growers steal water from neighboring wells and water truck daily deliveries.  Farmers and ranchers are unable to produce their goods without adequate water.  Homeowners’ wells are drained with their property left contaminated. 
  • In May of 2008, approximately 1000 gallons of red diesel overflowed from an indoor marijuana grower’s fuel room into a creek in Humboldt County.  The grower had left a valve open when pouring a larger diesel tank into a smaller one.  The environmental cleanup was a massive operation, the damage of which rivaled the impact of an oil spill in the ocean.  (See https://kymkemp.com/2009/10/08/the-aftermath-of-hacker-creek/.)
  • The pesticides and rodenticides found on cannabis sites in Calaveras County included: Carbofuran (banned in the USA), Tropicote, ammonium sulfate, Diamond Nectar humic acids/phosphates, Snow Storm Ultra potassium supplement, Sonic Bloom with vitamin B1, butane Romeo fertilizer, unknown rodent killers, Mighty Growth Enhancer, pH down phosphoric acid, ammoniacal nitrogen, Massive Bloom Formulation, Emerald Goddess, liquid insect killing soap, BioRoot, and miscellaneous bulk fertilizers.

  • More recently, the massive illegal growers have been going into southern Oregon, where they lease property from landowners under the guise of growing a small amount of legal hemp.  The operations require a tremendous amount of water, which is stolen from local wells and rivers.  (AP News, Massive Marijuana Operation Discovered in Southern Oregon, October 9, 2021.)

Indoor Growing Operations

We live in a world where climate change is currently a hot topic, and most politicians and large corporations have weighed in on the subject, supposedly in support of the environment.  What many do not realize, however, is they cannot support a green environment and commercial cannabis growing operations at the same time because the cultivation of marijuana has terrible detrimental effects on the planet.

A tremendous amount of electricity is required for the grow lamps of indoor growing operations, which account for most of the commercial cannabis in the U.S.  In addition, electricity is also required for temperature and humidity control, two components that are important for an abundant cannabis crop.  In 2012, staff scientist Evan Mills with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that for every kilogram of cannabis flower sold, 4,600 kilograms of carbon dioxide were produced.  His research found that 20 billion kilowatts of electricity were used annually, corresponding to 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and an energy expense of $6 billion.

Opponents argue that cannabis can be grown in greenhouses or outdoors.  While that might reduce some energy use, it will not add up to much because marijuana growing operations will continue to mostly be indoors. The high-THC strains are very particular in their need for a tropical habitat, and they require optimum temperature, humidity, and especially light.  Tight control of the photoperiod along with optimum darkness means more THC production and, ultimately, more profit.  It also means six harvests per year indoors as opposed to one or two harvests per year outdoors.

There is no denying the huge carbon footprint of indoor growing operations.  Defending these operations automatically places one in opposition to a clean environment and responsible energy use.  The use of renewable energy and more efficient bulbs will only make a small dent in the damage being done because the massive needs for optimum marijuana production far outweigh what solar or wind energy can supply.  This is a very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth. 

More Energy Considerations

Politicians may support reducing the use of electricity and our “carbon footprint” with the intention of creating a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, but at the same time, they support bills to expand the cannabis industry.  Although people sometimes think of marijuana as green, it is an extremely power-hungry crop.  The indoor growing facilities are energy-intensive and are increasing in number, most often unregulated as well.

Energy use includes 24-hour high-intensity grow lights, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems.  As well, bottled carbon dioxide is needed for plant growth to maximize the plant’s yield.  These demands tax the already aging electrical grids.

A look at relevant studies done on energy use on legal cannabis production in the U.S. provides insight into the magnitude of the problem.  Nationally, 80% of legal cannabis is grown indoors.

In 2019, cannabis legal cultivation in the U.S. used 1.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity, about as much as the nation’s 15,000 Starbucks stores.  Legal indoor marijuana growing operations use enough electricity to power 2 million average-sized U.S. homes, which is equivalent to 1% of the total U.S. power use, at a cost of $6 billion per year.  Each year, this produces greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 3 million cars on the road, according to a 2011 study at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Studies also looked at the legal cannabis industry energy use in Colorado.  A 2020 study by Colorado State University’s Sustainability Research Laboratory found that Colorado’s legal indoor marijuana production carbon footprint is over 30% greater than its coal mining industry.  Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment reported that electricity use from the legal growing of cannabis utilized nearly 4% of the city’s total electricity in 2018.

A study published in Nature Sustainability indicated that the Colorado legal cannabis industry generates the carbon equivalent of 520,000 additional fuel-efficient, gasoline-powered vehicles on the road, based on the fuel efficiency of cars at the time of the study, or 30% more vehicles. 

Massachusetts’ cannabis industry used 10% of the state’s industrial electricity consumption in one study in 2020.  In California in 2011, the legal cannabis industry used 3% of all electricity consumed and 8% of household use.

For more information on cannabis and its massive energy waste, see the following articles:

  • Rocky Mountain PBS, As Environmental Impacts Become Clearer, Cannabis Growers in Colorado Look for Sustainable Solutions, September 29, 2021
  • Western Farmer-Stockman, Insatiable Demand for Pot has Created a Huge Carbon Footprint, March 12, 2021
  • Politico, An Inconvenient Truth (About Weed), August 10, 2021
  • Daily Mail, When Going Green is Dirty, March 10, 2021
  • The New York Times, Study:  Pot Growers Inhale 1% of U.S. Electricity, Exhale GHGs of 3M Cars, April 11, 2011
  • Energy News Network, Most States Legalizing Marijuana Have Yet to Grapple with Energy Demand, June 27, 2019
  • Washington Examiner, Legalized Marijuana is a Global Warming Nightmare, August 5, 2022
  • The Weather Network, Cannabis Cultivation has an Enormous Carbon Footprint, Study Finds, March 23, 2021