This Saturday, Heath residents will vote at the annual town meeting on whether or not to sell the Heath school building to Carnegie Arch, a company that intends to grow recreational and medical-use cannabis.
I am grateful to live in a democratically run town where meaningful discussions concerning our beloved town’s future happen respectfully. Our town’s financial situation, like many rural communities with a low tax base and urgent infrastructure needs, is challenging and complex. But while selling the building to Carnegie Arch may appeal to us as a potential “quick-fix” to our town’s financial issues, I am wary of trading our town’s most valuable asset, our $3,200,000 school building that is owned outright, for $250,000 and the promise of an income stream from the nascent cannabis industry whose long-term economic success seems dubious. Just as we must consider Heath’s long-term financial security, we must also, as global citizens, consider the environmental impacts on climate change of indoor-grown cannabis.
As scientists urge a last-ditch effort to avoid the disastrous effects of climate change, can we afford the cost of indoor-grown marijuana? Indoor cannabis cultivation utilizes a highly controlled environment to produce marijuana year-round. Heating and cooling the building, artificial lighting, dehumidification, and pumping water and fertilizers through the system all come with a monstrous footprint:
— A kg of marijuana grown indoors produces a whopping 4,600 kg of CO2 in an average U.S. climate. Compare this to 0.44 kg CO2 per kg of apples, or 19.36 kg CO2 per kg of coffee.
— One marijuana cigarette of indoor grown marijuana produces as much carbon dioxide as burning a 100W bulb for 25 hours.
— It takes 70 gallons of oil to produce one cannabis plant indoors.
— An analysis performed by the Global Footprint Network found that the carbon footprint of indoor-grown cannabis in Colorado was 400 times that of cannabis grown in an unheated greenhouse in Columbia.
— The cannabis industry currently uses the same quantity of electricity of 2,000,000 U.S. homes and produces emissions equivalent to 3,000,000 cars.
As a green community town that is also a self-designated “compassionate community,” is it responsible to fund our town on the profits of this unnecessarily polluting industry? Carnegie Arch plans a propane-based co-generation system to supply electricity beyond what National Grid currently provides. Ironically, the town of Heath has a grant to install a solar field which they could use at the site if the town keeps the property.
To mitigate the climate crisis, renewables need to go hand-in-hand with a concerted tightening of our belts. There is something ironic about the idea of a Heath school-turned marijuana factory, chugging away in the blizzards of January, utterly insulated from its effects on climate change, while farmers growing food around the world (including in our own farming community) who depend on delicate cycles of sunshine and rainfall, cycles that are becoming increasingly disturbed as we plunge into a climatically chaotic future, are often the first and hardest hit.
I also have doubts about the economic stability of the cannabis industry and how unpredictably fluctuating town revenue would affect Heath’s ability to make sound economic decisions. According to Carnegie Arch, their projected gross sales is based on a price per pound of $3,500 for recreational and $6,000 for medicinal. Right now the price is high in here in Massachusetts. But according to the Colorado Department of Revenue, prices for buds dropped from $1,948 per pound in 2017 to $759 in 2018. And in Oregon, where prices have also plummeted in the three years since legalization to $600 per pound, the saturated market currently has enough weed to last several years.
How much is marijuana really worth? Only time will tell. For comparison, other high-value potent medicinal herbs such as goldenseal and ginseng, crops that take years of cultivation before reaching a small harvestable size, might garner $200 per pound.
It seems risky business to muddle our town’s finances with an industry whose future is so uncertain. And indoor marijuana production in New England is unsustainable at best: a gross misuse of resources. Farming should be part of the climate solution, not the problem. My hope for Heath is that it will not lose sight of its global responsibility in the myopia of its own financial duress, but that we will find a solution that provides a secure future for all.
Meredith Wecker is a farmer in Heath.