Increased Ethanol Production a Disaster for Marine Life

Besides raising the price of corn and creating food shortages and problems in poor countries that rely on corn as a staple food crop, increased corn production for ethanol manufacturing could create a marine environmental disaster:

A Canadian scientist says a planned increase in corn ethanol production in the U.S. will spark an environmental disaster for marine life in the Gulf of Mexico.

Geographer Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia says fertilizer runoff from the extra corn will expand the Gulf of Mexico's so-called "dead zone" — where there is so little oxygen that marine life cannot survive. The zone measures about 12,400 miles each summer.

Donner's research indicates that nitrogen pollution in the major rivers that run into the gulf would increase by as much as 34 percent if the U.S, were to meet its biofuel production goals set for the year 2022.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.