Whoa, dude, you are totally harshing my mellow.

Pot heads: destroying our environment, one toke at a time.

People growing marijuana indoors use 1 percent of the U.S. electricity supply, and they create 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year (not counting the smoke exhaled) according to a report by Evan Mills, an energy analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

After medical pot use was made legal in California in 1996, Mills says, per-person residential electricity use in Humboldt County jumped 50 percent compared to other parts of the state.

In order to produce some 17,000 metric tons of marijuana this year, Mills estimates authorized growers will use $5 billion worth of energy. That works out to the output of seven big electric power plants.

One percent of the entire U.S. supply? I find that a little hard to believe, but okay. Figure: growing marijuana indoors would be a lot like any indoor terrarium, right? So you need big powerful lights, and those lights have to be on a lot?

How come they can’t just build greenhouses? You know, with windows? It is legal there, right?

One thing’s for sure: criticize the stoners for raping Mother Earth, and they’ll blame somebody else. Supermarkets, for instance. Supermarkets use an awful lot of electricity. And convenience stores.

No, wait, not convenience stores. That’s where we get our munchies. Wait, man, slow the car down so I can dump out this trash.

Via Memeorandum.