Gulf of Mexico’s unique Orca Basin shouldn’t become a carbon dump (commentary)

Filed 2h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Mourning Song

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Baker, Cornelia, 1855- · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

The Orca Basin, a hypersaline, oxygen-free lake sitting on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor about 168 miles off Louisiana, has drawn EPA approval for a startup called Carboniferous Inc. to dump 20 tons of sugarcane bagasse into it under a project called MACS, aimed at locking away atmospheric carbon permanently. The company plans to monitor results for just 14 months before declaring an outcome.

A scientist who has studied the basin for years argues the plan risks disturbing a unique, ancient microbial ecosystem — one used by astrobiologists as an analog for icy moons like Europa — in exchange for scientific answers that are either already known or can't responsibly be gathered this way. Even total burial of the basin floor in biomass, the piece notes, would offset roughly six-tenths of a percent of annual global emissions.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Approving a permanent, irreversible intervention in an irreplaceable ecosystem on the strength of a 14-month monitoring window is the regulatory equivalent of performing surgery and checking back next spring to see how it went. The math given here — an ecological gamble for less than a week's worth of global emissions — suggests this was never really about scale, just about someone needing a pilot project to point to.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Mourning Song · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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