4PM Marijuana wastes energy?

Okay, get ready for a mind-boggling number. According to research reported on in the New York Times by Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, indoor cultivation of marijuana plants consumes enough energy to power 2 million U.S. homes, which means about 1% of all energy consumed in the country. It’s because the high-intensity lights used to grow it are about 500 times more powerful than an ordinary reading bulb. He goes on to explain that this is clearly bad on the production side, but the consumption side also means a tremendous increase in environmental impact because of the carbon dioxide (which I personally don’t care about, but also it would seem that this is CO2 captured from the environment by the plant in the first place, so a net zero change aside from the energy use). I just found that number staggering. For every 100 watts of power used in the U.S., he thinks 1 goes for marijuana production. Amazing. Of course, the story also explains that with modern agricultural technology (and decriminalization, which would permit outdoor growing), lowering this energy consumption dramatically would be fairly easy.