tagged w/ Gulf Dead Zone
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While the BP oil gusher has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf.While the BP oil gusher has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent... more
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After a decade of nothing being done to address this serious environmental problem, let's see what Lisa Jackson does under the Obama administration. She will have to coordinate her efforts with Tom Vilsack of the USDA, and that may prove to be a sticky situation if he has to put pressure on Monsanto and other agribusiness companies (factory farms) whose phosphate herbicides and fertilizers are contributing in great part to this problem. Monsanto knowingly poisoned an entire town in Alabama with PCBs. Now their chemicals along with other toxic runoff and fertilizers poison our waterways. It has to end.After a decade of nothing being done to address this serious environmental problem,... more
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Gulf Dead Zone | Discovery News
Video: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/video/
-- America's taste for meat is a well-known enemy of the environment; growing feed for livestock guzzles far more oil and water, and pumps out far more nitrogen-laced runoff, than if we were all vegetarians.
Now new research shows how the leftover fertilizer is contributing to an oxygen-starved dead zone where the Mississippi River drains into the Gulf of Mexico. Last summer, the zone was nearly the size of Massachusetts.
Gidon Eshel of Bard College at Simon's Rock in Massachusetts and Pamela Martin of the University of Chicago calculate that if Americans kicked their meat habit, it would prevent seven million tons of nitrogen from spilling into the gulf -- a reduction of nearly 90 percent.
"When we did the calculations, it was astonishing," Eshel said. "The main reason is we're feeding so much corn to livestock. It takes 4.5 times more cropland to do that than if you feed people a plant diet, and corn is so nitrogen-intensive."Gulf Dead Zone | Discovery News
Video: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/video/
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