Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from new contributing editor Nick Johnson. Johnson is a historian and editor based in Fort Collins, Colorado. His book Grass Roots: A History of Cannabis in the American West (2017) is a history of cannabis agriculture that explores the environmental and social dynamics of the nation’s most controversial crop. He also blogs (and occasionally podcasts!) about all things cannabis on his website, Hempirical Evidence.
It is admittedly difficult to begin any kind of essay in 2020, but writing about environmental issues this year is especially challenging, because there are so many ongoing calamities that I am loathe to add to the list.
However, whether they are wildfires, hurricanes, or disease, human behavior has contributed to these problems, so it is incumbent on us to keep taking stock of how our actions affect our environment.
On that note, I will again trot out the Very Tired Bad News Bear of 2020: cannabis agriculture remains a big environmental problem, and the industry’s increasing profitability means that we need to keep talking about it, even amid the year’s broader cataclysm.