September 14, 2022 01:44 PM UTC

First Time Doug Lamborn Has Ever Cared About Saving Energy

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• by: Colorado Pols

A conservative Georgia news outlet calling itself Georgia Virtue reports on a letter sent this week by Rep. Buddy Carter, co-authored by Colorado’s own Rep. Doug Lamborn, cautioning that the legalization of marijuana could pose “a threat to the U.S. energy grid.”

A Congressman from Georgia spearheaded the initiative to pen a letter to the Biden administration this week, joined by a colleague who says that nationwide marijuana legalization poses a threat to the nation’s energy grid.

Rep. Buddy Carter, a pharmacist from Georgia’s 1st congressional district, wrote the letter with Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado. The duo argued that there are “serious concerns regarding the energy and resource-intensive nature of marijuana cultivation.” The letter also said the practice would pose a threat to the nation’s environmental goals.

Addressed to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Energy Information Administration Administrator Joseph DeCarolis, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, the letter calls for more research, noting that “marijuana cultivation alone accounts for 1% of nationwide energy consumption and uses twice as much water as maize, soybeans, wheat, and wine grapes.”

It’s one of the more unusual angles we’ve seen “nationwide marijuana legalization” attacked from, a misleading premise to begin with since there is no proposal today to federally legalize marijuana–only to allow states to do so if they choose, which some number will choose not to. Either way you don’t hear Lamborn complaining about the massive amounts of electrical power consumed by cryptocurrency mining, in which just the seven biggest mining companies consume enough electricity to power all the homes in the nation’s fourth-largest city of Houston. But when it comes to resources consumed to produce marijuana, Rep. Lamborn suddenly becomes a born-again treehugging environmentalist!

As Congress debates whether to advance marijuana legalization, the American people must have a better understanding of the environmental costs of this rapidly growing industry. If the Administration seeks to reduce emissions and protect our environment as aggressively as it has previously committed, [Pols emphasis] we must have a comprehensive view of where emissions and other pollution occurs, as they will likely only grow.

So does this mean that Rep. Doug Lamborn supports the Biden administration’s agenda “to reduce emissions and protect our environment as aggressively as it has previously committed?” Given how Lamborn trashed the historic climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re guessing not. The best we can conclude from his record is that Doug Lamborn only cares about protecting the environment from marijuana.

There are a lot of very good reasons to upgrade the nation’s power grid, with growing marijuana far down the list. A future of electric cars parked in every all-electric heated home makes the power used for growing legalized marijuana an afterthought.

And it’s a future we’ll have to achieve without Doug Lamborn’s help.