Ways to heal the earth

1- Legalize marijuana
        There are so many uses for hemp and marijuana.  Hemp fibers can be used for clothes and building materials.  Hemp oil can be used for plastics and lubricants.  Here are some facts about hemp:

• Unlike cotton, hemp is naturally hardy and drought tolerant and grows well without herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers. Twenty-five percent of all the pesticides used in the U.S. are applied to cotton.
   
• Its growth rate is so rapid, it is ready for harvest in only 4 months- reaching a height of 6-12 feet, and producing 3-6 tons of dry fiber per acre.
   
• Industrial hemp is not a drug. Unlike its cousin marijuana, industrial hemp has only trace amounts of THC - the chemical that produces the high. Unfortunately, the U.S. government refuses to legalize the cultivation of industrial hemp and clings to the obsolete myth that it is a drug.
   
• Hemp fibers are one of Earth's longest, strongest and most durable fibers and several times stronger than cotton.
   
• Hemp fibers yield superior paper with far more recycling lives than wood-based paper or cotton fibers. Hemp fiber paper resists decomposition, and does not yellow with age when an acid-free process is used. Hemp paper more than 1,500 years old has been found.
   
• Growing Hemp can save trees. According to the US Dept of Agriculture, one acre of hemp yields the same amount of paper pulp as four acres of trees on an annual basis.
   
• Hemp has been shown to "eat" radioactivity at Chernobyl. Hemp is proving to be one of the best phyto-remediative plants in the world. These plants have the ability to decontaminate soil by absorbing and/or trapping pollutants ranging from radiation and pesticides to solvents and toxins leaching from landfills.

Marijuana relaxes people.  It is also a mood lifter.  Depending on which strain (C. Indica or C. Sativa) it can help with mania and depresssion.  It relieves stress and it also increases the appetite, useful for wasting with AIDS or anorexia.

2- Alternative Fuels -

Biodeisel, which can come from quite a few sources, such as timber waste or hemp fibers is an alternative to gasoline.  Scientists are also working on hydrogen fuel cells that can generate electricity.  Unfortunately, there are corporate interests that want to keep these fuels under wraps and keep hemp and marijuana illegal.

3- Recycling -

We can recycle about 99% of our garbage.  This includes worn out clothes and motor oil.  Used motor oil can be refined into gasoline.

4- Reusing

We can reuse many things we throw away, including bottles and old milk and juice jugs, as well as plastic containers of all kinds.

5- Ending war

For example in Iraq, there has been so much pollution from depleted uranium.  In the Vietnam war, the US poluted Vietnamese rainforests with agent orange, which many vietnam vets came home sick with complications.  The Iraqi desert and Afghan deserts are littered with depleted uranium shells that pollute the ground water.  Factories that make munitions create industrial pollution that goes into our air and water.