To change from an economy based upon the importation of crude oil to an economy based upon a renewable, vegetable, resource which can be entirely grown at home would be as great a challenge as it was to put men on the Moon. Yet America managed that while an enviously admiring world looked on, and if the American people decided that a biomass revolution was the way to save their children's future, they could almost certainly make it happen.

If this strange new solution for our environmental problems received the study it so obviously deserves, and if it came to be seen as a real way ahead, the problems that would have to be solved would be enormous. It would mean a re-think from start to finish where agriculture is concerned, and it would involve the most massive re-organization of big business. Both these things could indeed be accomplished, for ingenuity and organization are things America is good at. We have proved we can accommodate to change, and as long as we know we are being told the truth, we are prepared to make whatever effort is necessary.

The difficulty we will be faced with is the difficulty of changing our minds. We have just come through over a hundred years in which 'drugs' have been systematically vilified and turned into a positively satanic 'problem'. If we started growing hemp as the crop that solves the problems of the future, we would be almost bound to see the anti-drug warriors rushing in and trying to stop it happening. Without knowing the shameful history of how hemp came to be criminalized, many people will entertain terrible doubts. They still believe the propaganda, and they will wonder whether a hemp revolution will lead to awful consequences. Kids stoned all over America? Crashes on the roads? The 'leads-on' fear: does someone who smokes cannabis slide down the slippery slope to trying stronger and stronger drugs until they end up addicted to heroin? There's little evidence that this happens, but people are afraid of it all the same.

For a while, there may be a war for our minds. We will probably be encouraged to adopt the same attitude we have adopted all the way along: perception-changing substances – except for sugar, coffee, chocolate, tobacco and alcohol, valium and Prozac – are morally wrong and evil. Politicians may well keep on thumping the drum that has proved so successful at getting them elected: War on Drugs, law and order, build more prisons.

And, on the other side, our children will be watching us. They already feel we've made fools of ourselves with our War against Drugs, and they will be cynically interested to see what we are going to do next. They already treat our laws with contempt when it comes to the prohibition of anything, and it will be interesting to see how they come to feel about us if we now turn around, admit we were wrong and start trying to put things right.

And, if this writer is not being unduly optimistic, this could well be a turning point for our children. If they see us speaking truth, looking at realities and visibly trying to find an imaginative solution for their future, they may well start to forgive us for having been so easily stampeded by a pack of disinformers and bigots. If they see that we have brought our hysteria under control, and are thinking, level-headedly, about the real problems we are surrounded by, they may start to respect our efforts. That they would then join in and help, there is no doubt.

In the end, it all comes down to what is going to happen to our kids. Are we going to bequeath them this savage, unwinnable War against Drugs, along with a world where individual liberty is fading, pollution is uncontrolled and the weather is going crazy, or are we going to do something about it?

I'm sorry to leave my reader without suggesting a solution to this whole sorry problem. The biomass revolution is not my idea, because it was the youngsters who introduced me to it, and I have to admit that there may be all manner of reasons, quite part from the difficulties I have touched upon, which will prevent it from being anything more than a pipe-dream. But it is an idea, and that in itself is different.

My suspicion is, as I have already said, that the younger generation will find the answer to all this, and that our present crisis will indeed be faced, and overcome. If this is what they are going to do, they will need all the help we can give them, and the greatest gift we could bring them, at this time in history, is an honest, open-minded, examination of the facts. They are not going to be willing to be led by the nose as we were, and, with their own experience of what drugs are about, they are going to wake up quickly to the realization that their parents and grandparents were duped and misled. Where we go from here is unknowable, but if we go armed with the knowledge of what happened in the past, then we may be able to help in saving the future.