Dead zones vs. oil spills

While ethanol producers have been quick to spin the Deepwater Horizon tragedy toward their own advantage, NRDC's Nathanael Greene has a quick rebuttal:

The nitrogen runoff from corn grown all along the Mississippi causes a huge dead zone in the Gulf every summer. As this map shows, the dead zone at least as large as the oil spill and it takes a huge toll on the marine life and region's economy every summer. With about a third of the corn crop going to make corn ethanol, it should be clear that more corn ethanol is not a real solution.

He's referring to this image from the NYT, which makes a side-by-side visual comparison easy; in fact, the hypoxic zone looks considerably larger than the oil spill to date.

A hypoxic zone is in some ways not as destructive as an oil spill - it will not cripple fragile marshland ecosystems, for example - but the impact on marine life alone is no doubt harmful for the coastal fishing industry that could be (and once was?).

It is not news that corn ethanol is hardly an environmental angel, but it is worth keeping in the public conscience as the Deepwater Horizon leak continues unabated and the inevitable public backlash builds in strength.

BP makes "giant" discovery in Gulf of Mexico

BP's "giant" oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico is all over the news this morning.

“It will be bigger than the 3 billion barrels” of oil equivalent discovered at the nearby Kaskida field, said Robert Wine, a London-based spokesman at BP. “This is a whole new geological play we’ve got here.”

In the FT, a few analysts give their interpretations of the size and significance of the find. The FT also has this nifty chart showing the impressive technical strides deepwater drilling has made (the new "Tiber" find is over 10,000 meters deep, a depth considerably greater than Mount Everest's altitude of 8,848 meters).


Update: Tim Haab at Environmental Economics calls it "Economic theory of depletable resources 1, Peak oil predictions 0."

Again: higher oil prices create at least three types of incentives 1) Incentives to invest in alternative fuel technologies, 2) Incentives to conserve, and 3) Incentives to explore for new sources of oil.