New scapegoat to divert attention from BP?

If this article didn't carry Carolyn Lochhead's byline, I would be more inclined to take it on face value: Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production San Francisco Chronicle 07/06/2010. Her articles typically recite the conventional press corps wisdom of the moment that I'm particularly skeptical of her messaging framework in any of her reporting.

And this sounds awfully like an alibi for BP, although if she has reported the facts well:

While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, 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.

Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the algae dies, it settles to the ocean floor and decays, consuming oxygen and suffocating marine life.

Known as hypoxia, the oxygen depletion kills shrimp, crabs, worms and anything else that cannot escape. The dead zone has doubled since the 1980s and is expected this year to grow as large as 8,500 square miles and hug the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas. ...

One of the authors of that report, agricultural economist Otto Doering at Purdue University, said that a 50 percent boost in the ethanol blend in gasoline will significantly raise corn prices, driving farmers to pull land out of conservation and pastureland and into corn production. They are also likely to add more nitrogen fertilizers to boost yields.

Corn ethanol has been heavily subsidized since the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. Viewed by the corn industry as a lucrative market, ethanol is a perennial favorite in Congress. [my emphasis]

There are very legitimate concerns about the downsides of ethanol, not only in terms of environmental issues but in terms of how it affects the overall food supply.

But I can hear BP lawyers arguing it now: it's impossible to say what effect the oil disaster has had on the gulf because of all those bad corn farmers dumped their fertilizers.

And BP's public relations department: Deepwater drilling is still necessary because those bad American consumers still drive their cars. And alternative fuels like ethanol present a greater risk to the environment than even a massive oil spill like Deepwater Horizon.

And the Republican Party: BP wasn't the one who wiped out the Gulf Coast fishing and tourist industries. It was those hippies promoting all this here alternative fuel nonsense!

Tags: bp oil disaster, ethanol