I was at work last night, sorting pakages away in the incredible seventy degree weather that pierced in through the cargo doors of the UPS Hub, when one of my co-workers told me about an extraordinary story that has been unfolding in Mexico. As most people who read this blog know, I have travelled to the country many times--including five times to the mainland. I have adopted parts of the Mexican diet as my own, including my pronness to eat corn tortillas on a irregular basis.

The story is fasciniting, and is possibly prone to change my perspective on corn ethanol production in the United States. My co-worker informed me that Mexicans have had a protest over the doubling to tripling of corn tortilla prices in the past year. A bundle that once averaged 63 cents now averages 1.36 to 1.81. For a nation that has an average income of four dollars per day, a bundle of tortillas now can cost, therefore, 1/3 to 1/2 of a daily wage.

This price spike has occurred most specifically due to the sudden increase of corn ethanol production in the United States. The intention is to reduce dependence on foriegn oil--that sounds good to the average North American, doesn't it? Yet, according to Tom Phillpot (is that a real name? Really-think about it), Corn based ethanol has triggered the interest on consumers due to the U.S. government's claim that it is more environmentally friendly than oil based fuels. Yet, the reality is that ethanol may actually be worse for the environment than fossil fuels ("Attack of the Killer Corn"). It turns out that the corn industry has placed so many insecticides and hormones onto the fields of corn, that there is now emerging an environmental "Dead Zone" the size of New Jersey each year within a region streching from the Upper Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico.

It turns out that ethanol is not as great of an idea as I had previously thought. I will now think twice before I support an "environmentally friendly" alternative. I am skeptical that the practice of ethanol production is "taking food out of the mouths of the poor," as one of my college professors once stated on a regular basis. Further, this is happening so that wealthy North Americans can keep driving their private SUV's, rather than having to spend time in public transportation with undesirables.