[***Mr D***]

Agree something will need to be done, but we are a world where the majoraty (SP) think 'when we need to'.

There are many a proposal I have seen on the net.

a good one is Cannabis/Hemp.

Quote.


Figures show that hemp can produce up to 10 tons of biomass per acre, anywhere from England to France to Canada to Australia. Not only can this biomass be turned into paper, but it can also be turned into both engine fuel and power-plant fuel (pun not intended but appreciated). And clean fuel at that. For whilst our reliance upon the burning of fossil fuels has fostered the Greenhouse Effect, the use of hemp biomass for fuel will not cause such insidious environmental problems.
Why not? Well, for starters, hemp cultivated en masse can be turned into methanol or ethanol, by various known processes involving the fermentation of the cellulose found within hemp biomass. Ethanol is actually one of the best kinds of engine fuel since it leaves no polluting products after it has been burned (racing cars use it). Thus cars can run on ethanol derived from hemp biomass. This is no quixotic dream but a genuine possibility which makes good Green sense. Needless to say, such a move away from oil eventually implies no more oil-slicks and no more wars over oil. As a precursor for fuel, cannabis hemp is slick all right, but not in the way oil is. Doubtless OPEC will not view this information in quite the same light. Hemp biomass can also be turned into charcoal for use within power stations (by a kind of alchemical process known as pyrolysis). Whereas the burning of fuels like coal entails prolific toxic gas emission, the chief gas released from the burning of charcoal is carbon dioxide which, in the long run, will be reabsorbed by subsequent hemp crops. In this way, harmful greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide do not increase with time but are kept in balance through field upon field of fresh air-generating hemp.