More happy news. You know, I’m beginning to understand why Al Gore isn’t running - you know the Republicans will manage to pin every single Bush policy disaster - things like this - on the Democrats:
Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since World War II. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price.
The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone” — a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs and shrimp suffocate.
The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.
With demand for corn booming, some researchers fear the dead zone will expand rapidly, with devastating consequences.
“We might be coming close to a tipping point,” said Matt Rota, director of the water resources program for the New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group. “The ecosystem might change or collapse as opposed to being just impacted.”
And the environment is not the only thing corn affects.
The production and use of ethanol could in all reality help reduce the gulf dead zone. Much of our wetlands have been drained or destroyed but if this land was used to grow cattails (thus put back into wetlands) the cattails could be used for ethanol. There has been research showing
cattails to be superior pound for pound than corn in the sugar content needed for ethanol.
Cattails would need no fertilizer and would clean the water of the very nutrients that are causing the dead zone.
Farmers then could grow a crop for profit that cleans the water, returns wetland habitat and helps to reduce our use of oil