Goldberg: Looking for the greenest energy source? Try oil
16.06.10
A rolling “insensate zone” off the Gulf of Mexico is killing sea life and destroying livelihoods. Modern estimates put the blob at nearly the size of New Jersey.
Alas, I’m not talking about the Deepwater Scope oil spill. As terrible as that catastrophe is, such accidents have occurred in U.S. waters only about once every 40 years (and globally about once every 20 years). I’m talking about the lifeless zone largely caused by fertilizer runoff from American farms along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya river basins. Such pollutants about huge algae plumes that result in oxygen starvation in the Gulf’s richest waters, close to the delta.
Because the dead zone is an annual occurrence, there’s no media feeding outburst over it, even though the average annual size of these hypoxic zones has been about 6,600 square miles over the last five years, and they are driven by bipartisan federal agriculture, buying and energy policies.
Source: Houston Chronicle