Today marks the start of the 1st Annual Hemp History Week, which is taking place between now and May 23, 2010. As a national grassroots education campaign, 185 events have been planned nationwide in 32 states with the goal of renewing strong support for hemp farming in the U.S. In addition to events across the country, organizers also plan to collect tens of thousands of hand-signed postcards addressed to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder asking them to end the ban on hemp farming and let farmers once again grow the versatile and profitable crop.

Hemp History Week volunteers across the country have researched the history of hemp farming and manufacturing in their regions before the crop was essentially banned by its misclassification as a drug. Among this re-discovered history are the diaries of USDA Chief Botanist Lyster Dewey who bred hemp cultivars extensively in the Washington, DC area during the early part of the 20th Century, primarily at Arlington Farms on which the Pentagon was built. The diaries and personal photos of the USDA’s top expert on fiber production for more than 45 years reveal a treasure trove of information on hemp farming research by the U.S. Government from the 1890′s to the 1940′s. This and other research will be presented at scheduled public events this week, along with presentations by local politicians such as David Norris, Mayor of Charlottesville, VA; prominent business leaders such as David Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps; and others who support hemp farming in the United States. Events are planned in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas and Washington, D.C. among other states. A complete listing of Hemp History Week events is available at: HempHistoryWeek.com/events

Lyster Dewey, Arlington Farms August 28, 1929
Measuring a hemp plant 4 meters high

Hemp History Week supporters include Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who submitted an official statement in support of Hemp History Week to Congress earlier this month. “Hemp was an important crop for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and thousands of American farmers until it was outlawed completely in 1970 by the Controlled Substances Act. I know many farmers in my district could benefit greatly from the renewed freedom to rotate industrial hemp into their growing seasons. Hemp History Week will help other elected officials learn about America’s rich hemp heritage along with the tremendous benefits of growing hemp in America once again,” explains Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

In addition to volunteer-run events nationwide, natural product retail outlets are also participating in Hemp History Week by sampling best-selling hemp products in their stores including: Nature’s Path’s Hemp Plus™ Granola Cereal, Sunny Hemp™ Granola Bars and Hemp Plus™ Waffles; Living Harvest Foods Tempt™ hemp milk and frozen desserts; Nutiva’s organic shelled hemp seed; Manitoba Harvest Hemp Pro™ 70 and Hemp Pro™ 50 protein powders and Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Participating stores include Mom’s Organic Market in the Washington, D.C. region as well as Westerly Natural Market in New York City, Earthfare in North Carolina, Henry’s Farmers Markets, Rainbow Grocery and Jimbo’s Naturally in California, New Seasons Market in Portland, Oregon, in addition to local co-ops throughout the country.

Sustainable hemp seed, fiber and oil are already used in nutritious food, textiles, body care and even auto-parts. Companies like Ford Motors, Patagonia, and The Body Shop, in addition to Hemp Industries Association members are using imported hemp in their products today.

For the last four growing seasons, farmers in North Dakota have received licenses from the North Dakota Department of Agriculture to grow industrial hemp. Despite the state’s authorization to grow hemp, these farmers risk raids by federal agents and forfeiture of their farms if they try to grow the crop, due to the failure of the Drug Enforcement Administration to distinguish non-drug industrial hemp from drug types of Cannabis.

Grown commercially in Canada since 1998, hemp has become one of the most profitable crops per acre for farmers north of the U.S. border. Due to its many benefits – a reusable resource in every aspect and offering a long list of health and nutritional benefits – hemp is one of the fastest growing industries in natural foods. Hemp seed and oil is a rich source of the Omega-3 & 6 essential fatty acids in an optimum ratio, including the Super Omegas Stearidonic Acid (SDA) and Gamma Linolenic Acid (GLA). Hemp’s protein is second only to soybeans in completeness, containing all 10 essential amino acids, with no enzyme inhibitors, thus making it more easily digestible. Hemp seed is also a good source of vitamins and minerals such as vitamin E and iron, as well as dietary fiber. Simply put, hemp seed is a gluten-free superfood.

Hemp History Week – May 17-23, 2010 is an unprecedented industry-wide project initiated by The Hemp Industries Association and Vote Hemp, involving hundreds of hemp manufacturers and retailers. The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) is a non-profit trade group representing hemp companies, researchers, farmers and supporters. Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, non-profit advocacy group founded in 2000 by members of the hemp industry to remove barriers to industrial hemp farming in the U.S. through education, legislation and advocacy. While 16 states have passed pro-hemp farming legislation to date, Hemp History Week organizers want to influence significant policy changes on the federal level as well.

For further information and a list of sponsors, go to: HempHistoryWeek.com

Please forward this announcement widely and get involved.

About the Hemp Industries Association
The Hemp Industries Association (HIA) represents the interests of the hemp industry and encourages the research and development of new products made from industrial hemp, oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis.

Web Site: http://www.HempIndustries.org
About Vote Hemp
Vote Hemp is a national, single-issue, nonprofit organization dedicated to the acceptance of and free market for industrial hemp, low-THC oilseed and fiber varieties of Cannabis, and to changes in current law to allow U.S. farmers to grow the crop.

Web Site: http://www.VoteHemp.com
Vote Hemp, Inc.
Adam Eidinger
Hemp History Week Coordinator
phone: 202-744-2671
email: adam@votehemp.com

Vote Hemp, Inc.
Jamie Trowbridge
Volunteer Coordinator
Hemp History Week
phone: 202-232-8997
email: jamie@hemphistoryweek.com

Technologies are still being tested, and environmental questions are as yet unanswered. A tidal plant in Manhattan, Maine or elsewhere in the United States that would feed significant power to the grid is at least a few years away.

The appeal is that it’s carbon-free and it’s there, No transmission lines are required

A complete unit would have four 20-foot turbine sections, two on each side of a generator capable of producing, at peak, about 250 kilowatts. The units could be mounted on the bottom or moored under water and in some cases could be stacked as many as four high

The project cannot proceed until more financing is obtained. Environmental reviews could be a “significant hurdle” for deployment of tidal energy systems. “These devices are going in new places, places where there hasn’t been industrial development,” he said. “So there are lots of questions.”

The first units in the water are not going to be competitive with coal. Our challenge is to get enough of them in the water and refine the manufacturing processes and other things we have to do to get them cost competitive.”

For ORP, as for other alternative energy start-ups, raising capital is difficult. The company will soon be looking for $10 million to $12 million to continue development of the system and begin installing it in the Western Passage.

China’s western Qinghai Province, containing major deposits of the country’s “combustible ice,” will see increased explorations for this emerging clean energy, Provincial Governor Luo Huining said on Saturday.

The plateau province plans to allow large energy companies along with researchers to tap this new source of energy while minimizing environmental threats, Luo said on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature.

“Combustible ice,” or natural gas hydrate, is mainly found in deep seas and atop plateaus. Approximately one cubic meter of “combustible ice” equals 164 cubic meters of regular natural gas.

At a time of energy bottlenecks, the new energy resource has drawn interest from many countries. Additional attention has focused on the “ice” having a low proportion of impurities, resulting in it generating almost no pollutants when burned.

More than 100 countries around the world have found deposits of “combustible ice.” The deposits in Qinghai Province, home to one-quarter of China’s total reserve on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, were discovered in September 2009.

“Combustible ice” reserves on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are estimated to equal at least 35 billion tonnes of oil, which could supply energy to China for 90 years.

Luo said tapping this new energy resource should be given high priority in China’s energy strategy.

Actor George Clooney is the latest to find inspiration in The First Earth Battalion. The Men Who Stare at Goats takes a playful shot at psychic soldiers and high performance technologies in the military, with Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor joining Clooney. Bridges humorously portrays Channon in his role as Bill Django, founder of the New Earth Army. “It’s impossible to keep a great legend down,” says Channon.

To read the inspiring Ode Magazine story on Jim, click here

I was expecting little from Copenhagan and I was not disappointed. The idea that we could trust leaders to create a game changing conference were slim. The idea that we might have high integrity and wise decisions that could help move us away from consumption in favor of a sustainable agenda was a dream unfulfilled. What we now have is disappointment, a lowering of expectations and hopefully the catalyst for a global grassroots movement more powerful than the world has ever witnessed.

That movement is the only hope it appears we have to turn things around since our leaders are now proven wimps who have sold their souls. Even if the hundreds of Nobel scientists are off in their conclusions about our fate, it still makes sense to change the game as in first do no harm. But that will not happen anytime soon as evidenced by Copenhagan and we need action NOW. So we will watch for and continue to report on the sprouts of the new movement (See Paul Hawken’s Blessed Unrest), and see who puts forward the most inclusive, compelling and empowering grass roots call to action that connects the large and growing global sustainability movement that will ultimately throw out non-performing leaders in favor of those who will enact the binding legislation we need and even more importantly, create the changes in their personal lives that makes oil obsolete as soon as possible. After Copenhagan (AC) is the new AD. “Accelerate the Transition” is our new moral imperative.

Copenhagen Reveals a Vicious Circle of Mistrust

An Editorial by Christian Schwägerl, http://www.spiegel.de

Copenhagen’s conference ended without a legally-binding agreement to reduce emissions.

Who is to blame for the summit disaster? The US? China? The EU? The G-8? In fact, all of the above. It was a coming together of states that killed off a vital resource for the world: trust.

In Copenhagen, the outlines of a dangerous world were there for all to see. The climate summit did not end in a fist fight between tens of thousands of people, despite the fact that serious global problems were not resolved. Barack Obama did not have to fly out from the roof of a burning conference center. Nevertheless, it was palpable that this is a world in which trust is harder to come by than oil, and where there is more mistrust than CO2 emissions.

And yet Copenhagen has proven that trust is the most important resource for the transformation of the current oil-based system into a green civilization. It is more important than all the money that will be required for new technology, more efficient machines, dams and the survival of forest inhabitants.

It is a question of trust that China does not flood Europe with even more products made using cheap coal-based power, instead of replacing coal with alternative power stations; that Europe is not isolated as an island of environmentalists, while in Africa entire countries are becoming inhospitable; that climate aid amounting to billions does not land in private bank accounts in Africa, while there is not enough money for schools in the donor country; and that America does not come to rely on cheap oil, while China and India curb their fossil fuel consumption for reasons of climate protection.

In order for 9 billion people to live together on one planet, a circle of trust is required, one that rewards solutions and punishes the wrong economic activities of the past. That does not describe some kind of paradise. Rather it is the prerequisite for preventing a world without hope. In Copenhagen a vicious circle of mistrust came in to being, one that engulfed all the good intentions and plans.

The climate deal that was presented by the leaders of the United States, China, India, Germany and around 20 other states was about as worthless as toxic debt from AIG. There are no concrete CO2 targets for 2020 and 2050, there is no clearly distributed financing of the promised $100 billion in aid pledged to developing nations to adopt CO2-curbing green technologies and help pay for the damage caused to those countries by climate change. And there is no consistent monitoring of reductions and of how they are to be achieved. To announce a target of limiting global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is meaningless as long as there is no limit to the CO2 that humanity allows itself to emit by 2050: 750 billion tons, according to the best available science. At the current level that would already have been emitted by the 2020s. Yet there was not enough trust to commit to this kind of CO2 budget.

The deal reveals a crisis of trust between the states. The fact that Barack Obama flew in, gave a gruff speech, made a separate deal and then simply announced this — before the international community had even been made aware of it or had agreed to it — has corroded the UN process. Obama lacked the trust in this process and the courage to diagnose his own people with a case of energy obesity. Worse yet: At the first opportunity — at the plenum — it was not only the smaller Latin American states and Sudan that distanced themselves from the document, but also those who had helped draw it up: India, Russia and China.

‘Chimerica Versus the World’

One could seek culprits for the debacle: ” Chimerica” or the emerging countries, the EU, the G-8 or the G-77. The closest fit is “Chimerica against the rest of the world.” However, the Europeans could also have done a bit better, by unilaterally upping their reductions target from 20 to 30 percent. That, however, was too much for Italy and Poland. There was plenty of selfishness to go around. Everyone wants to be the first to strike oil, but when it comes to the much more sensible policy of protecting resources, then it’s all about waiting.

But the ideas being discussed at Copenhagen were solutions that would still be sensible even if climate change, despite expectations, turned out to be an illusion on the part of researchers. Fossil fuel reserves are limited, with oil falling into short supply within 40 years and coal within 120 years. The extraction of fossil fuels in Saudi Arabia is not only environmentally destructive, it also makes the potentate richer and terrorists more aggressive. Conserving oil, coal and natural gas is a requirement for security policies, foreign policy — and even education policy. After all, money saved by a society on fuel imports is not only available for other forms of consumption, but also indirectly for new schools and teachers.

One of the few enlightening sentences uttered by former US President George W. Bush during his terms in office was that the West is “addicted to oil.”

‘The Inhofe Supremacy’

The extent of that addiction was apparent in many actors at Copenhagen, but especially in one. He only came for a few hours, but he was also decisively responsible for the chaos that marked the negotiations: James Inhofe, a Republican politician who does whatever he can in Washington to inhibit Obama’s efforts to impose CO2 limits. He is not only ridiculous in describing climate change as made up by “the Hollywood elite,” but outright dangerous. He would rather sacrifice American natural beauty at home and American soldiers abroad than to push his country to the forefront of a green technology revolution. For men of his ilk, oil and coal are tantamount to power, not a curse. They believe that Americans have a God-given right to release twice the level of emissions as the Europeans and four times as much as the planet’s average inhabitant. “The Inhofe Supremacy” could be the name of a film about the man, because the primacy in the world he is trying to secure for his country is enormous. But there are plenty of Chinese, Indians and Australians who think similarly. Working together in Copenhagen, they prevented humanity from starting to work together to solve a number of shared problems — to the detriment of every start-up investment that has the prospect of a hundred years of green profits.

Men like Inhofe, who in Copenhagen warned that nations shouldn’t be “deceived into thinking the US would pass cap-and-trade legislation,” have the effect of poison when it comes to the urgently needed global trust-building. As in nuclear disarmament, the expectation is pivotal that the other side will take the same difficult steps. But as long as the danger persists that a party could again come into power in America that would wipe the findings of climate science from the table and would rather send soldiers abroad than solar power engineers, then there won’t be much trust towards the US. And the Chinese may be talking the talk on climate issues, but as long as they are only spending a small part of their enormous cash reserves on green investments, their credibility will be compromised.

Oil Trumps Green Movement, At Least for Now

The consequences Copenhagen will have on other policy areas should not be underestimated: How can negotiating partners be certain that something similar won’t ensue when it comes to competition for natural resources? And how can people maintain hope that the megaproblems of our planet can be entrusted to the type of major summit round that just took place in Copenhagen?

The trust that is needed right now to revive the seriously injured political process can no longer be expected to come from the top down. Perhaps we now need a totally different coalition of the willing, of people who can set a lifestyle example that is easily adopted around the world. That movement would have to be more aggressive in its stances against special interests that have run astray, like those of the drug dealers in the oil industry. This could be the hour of a new global environmental movement, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom says. A movement that isn’t just reflected in dutiful survey answers, but also in the new lifestyle choices it makes and in the persistence with which it raises pesky questions for companies and political parties.

How Much Respect Do You Have for Yourself?

For the time being, the oil movement remains stronger than the environmental movement, the egotists stronger than the people willing to share, the SUV movement greater than that of the train riders. The faction of people who are willing to risk damage to posterity is greater than that of those who would prefer caution.

Those who feel a sense of disquiet in light of the tragedy of Copenhagen, have good reason to be quite furious with the powerful leaders who have squandered this summit. It’s okay to be enraged by the fact that political leaders are scaremongering about our future existence but at the same time are unwilling to accept solutions.

Then you have to go to the mirror and ask yourself: How much of Inhofe’s mentality can I see in myself? How much respect do I deserve for treating the planet correctly? It will take millions and billions of affirmative answers in order to build the trust that can grow into a climate conference more successful than the one that just ended in Copenhagen.

To lean more click here.

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