Could you soon be pumping shrimp shells into your gas tank?
What makes more sense, eating prime Gulf of Mexico shrimp or turning them into gasoline? If Midwestern farmers have their way, we’ll be turning shrimp into gasoline. If you burn a gallon of corn-based ethanol in your car, you’re pouring nitrogen onto a field in the Midwest, and the runoff from that field runs down to the Gulf of Mexico where it adds to the dead zone. So instead of shrimp from the Gulf, you have ethanol from the Mississippi watershed. How do you feel about putting lovely shrimp into your car? I’m not too happy about it. Growing shrimp is a higher and better use for the Gulf of Mexico than serving as a waste receptacle for corn-growing ethanol makers. We need some way to tie the two problems together, so that we can make the proper judgments about what to do.