EcoHealth: March 2008 Archives

(Anita Weier, The Capital Times) 

A study by Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lead author Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia modeled the effects of biofuel production on nutrient pollution in an aquatic system.

They looked at the estimated amounts of land and fertilizer needed to meet a U.S. Senate production target of 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, more than three times the amount of ethanol produced in 2006.

If that goal is reached, the researchers say nitrogen loading from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico would increase by 10 to 19 percent.

As a result, they predict that nitrogen levels would rise to twice their recommended levels, leading to an expansion of the oxygen-starved dead zone that cannot support life -- an area already equal to the size of New Jersey.

Link to the story here

(Gus Speth, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies)  As Congress prepares to debate new legislation to address the threat of climate change, opponents again claim that the costs of adopting the leading proposals would be ruinous to the U.S. economy. The world's leading economists who have studied the issue say that's wrong. And you can find out for yourself.  Today, Yale's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies posted a new website developed by economics professor Robert Repetto. In a way that anybody can easily understand, it synthesizes the results of thousands of policy simulations from 25 economic models being used to predict the economic impacts of reducing U.S. carbon emissions. To try this new website, just click on http://www.climate.yale.edu/seeforyourself.