The Adventure of the Strangled Gulf

Author’s Note:  I offer this blog with profound apologies to the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and in support of H.R. 3650, which was recently passed by the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of  the House Science and Technology Committee.  This bill would create two national programs, coordinated by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to address impacts of algal blooms and hypoxia. The first of these programs would provide resources to respond to the appearance of blooms and hypoxia when requested to do so by a state.   The second proposes a network for observing, monitoring and forecasting such events.  This legislation will come up next for a full committee vote.

Having been summoned to accompany Mr. Sherlock Holmes to America, I presumed we were traveling to the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.  Owing to its insufferable heat and vapors, and mindful of the fact that autumn in the Southern reaches of the United States can be stultifying, I prepared a wardrobe of light linens and silks.

Upon meeting Holmes at Heathrow, I noted that his luggage appeared to contain a considerable volume of clothing and effects.  “I say, Holmes, you look as if you are preparing for a sojourn to the far northern reaches of the continent rather than a genteel exploration of the land known colloquially as “Dixie” said I.  Holmes regarded me with equal measures of bemusement and sufferance.  Said he “Watson, the victim of this crime certainly can be found south of New Orleans in the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean’s Gulf of Mexico.  However, that is not our destination.”

“But Holmes,” I protested, “the sum of my experience observing your investigative method encourages within me the instinct to gather and assess the evidence directly at the scene of the crime.”  I paused for his response, but received only a long, pensive stare.  Continuing,  I protested further, “Is it not rudimentary to the best implementation of the forensic sciences that evidence of the crime be gathered at the scene?”

“Exactly,” shouted Holmes with an enthusiasm that at once startled and intrigued me.  “Watson, you’ve hit upon the precise method called for in this adventure.   However, the scene of the crime lies many miles to the north, on the great drainage of the Mississippi River.”

Briefly reflecting on the quaint sound of the native vernacular used in our former colonies, I requested of Holmes a further elucidation of the facts in the case which would lead one to investigate the vast dead zone developing in the Gulf of Mexico by attending to suspects and evidence in the rural reaches of the Midwestern United States.

“Consider this, Watson,”  began Holmes, drawing reflexively on his favorite meerschaum, “the cause of death for this region is strangulation, that is the deprivation of oxygen , a method of murder most cruel.   This in turn, my good man, results in the death of all sea life rendering the waters in question completely bereft, as it were, of the ability to sustain life.”

I will confess to a moment’s impatience in my response.  “Yes, yes, Holmes, every school boy knows that algal blooms alter the natural state of oxygenation of waters and result in a damnable series of calamities leading inevitably to a lifeless ecosystem.  But how can cause for such circumstance be induced by simple farm folk many miles away?”

“Elementary, sir,” responded he with his characteristic aplomb, “the agents of death originate not on the land of simple farm folk you have heard of in folk songs and literature of the Americas, but in richly appointed office chambers of certain large corporations who manufacture, sell and spread upon the land substances designed to provide synthetic nourishment and destroy all forms of crop pests.”

“Quite so,” said I, “a service to the market place in my view.   Do you know how difficult it is to grow tomatoes in a London hot house?  Those aphids rendered most of my crop to rot and ruin.”

“Just so, Watson.  However, had you put poison on the fruit to destroy the aphids, would you then have considered them fit for your fine table?”

“I should say not, Holmes.  Is that the character of menace these corporations visit upon the fertile fields of America?”

Holmes paused, developing the  articulation of a line of reasoning in his well  calibrated mind.  “The evidence points clearly to a willfully malign chain of events.  Corn is grown in the Mississippi River drainage  for food, yes, but also for silage, for a form of sugar that is pervasive in the American diet owing to its low cost for production, and, oddly enough, for a new form of petrol called ethanol to power the vast fleets of motor driven conveyances in the United States.”

“Well done, then.  Those Americans are most enterprising in their agricultural endeavours.  They are to be commended for their versatility wouldn’t you say,” said I.

“My good man, the Americans are to be commended for many things, but the over-planting, fertilizing and and the infusion of pesticides in the enterprise of corn monoculture is not among those things for which praise is currently due.  The modern farming methods remove carbon from the soil, rather than replenishing it.  The use of fertilizers and pesticides causes extravagant runoff into the Father of Waters, as the Mississippi is  known colloquially, sending those substances down the water course, through the fine city of Saint Louis, into the Mississippi River delta and out into the Gulf of Mexico where they visit upon the ecosystem a death by strangulation most foul and mordantly purposeful.”

I regarded Holmes with a degree of skepticism.  Certainly no group of merchants, no matter how large or prosperous would engage in such overt criminal behavior.  It would seem that the populace would rise up in protest demanding their imprisonment and a great measure of restitution for their crimes.  I said as much to Holmes and offered the perspective that the manufacture of petrol through cultivation of corn must be, in and of itself, some license for variation from normal societal protocol owing to the desperate state of climate change.  Surely the substitution of an agricultural product for one which emits carbon is desirable and worth some small measure of accommodation.

With characteristic dismissal of my well reasoned point, Holmes deflated my argument without any artful pretense of ceremony.  “While I would not agree with your basic premise that solving one problem by creating another constitutes a reasonable bargain, it is clearly not the case that even that dubious purpose is accomplished by rendering corn into a combustible liquid.  The facts in evidence do not support in any reasonable and rigorous scientific analysis the proposition that this method of generating petrol reduces the carbon emitted into the atmosphere.   In spite of the protestations of the Senators and Representatives who hail from the corn producing states and constitute the representative democracy for that constituency, the science of the matter does not lead to validation of the premise of their weakly wrought hypothesis.”

Once again, his eloquent reasoning having convinced me of the accuracy of his deduction I inquired: “Who then, Mr. Holmes, are we pursuing as suspects in this crime.  Who can be held to account for the strangulation of the Gulf of Mexico?”

“There are several responsible parties, corporations who conduct large scale factory farm operations as a component of their highly diversified business portfolio.   The individuals who control those corporations made the decisions which gave the profitability of their enterprise primacy over the health and well-being of the public and the shared resources of the commons.  This is a violation of law going back to the earliest traditions of law from which we draw much of our current system of  justice.  Among the suspects is a certain corporation known as ADM.”

“I say,” remarked I eagerly, “I have heard of them.  Doesn’t that stand for Archer Daniels Midland?”

“That is how it is represented.  However, I have a different theory.  I believe that the initials actually stand for America’s Devious Moriarty“

 

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