I’m all for reducing the dependency upon foreign oil in the United States, be it through alternative fuels or drilling more wells. I’d love to see technology finally develop to make harvesting shale oil efficient enough to go after too.

But at what price do we pay, literally, for biofuel? Already the price of tortillas has risen due to the demand for corn increasing for biofuels. Now in Germany the price of another prized crop has risen for the same reason. Barley, a key ingredient in one of mankind’s most tasty of beverages, is facing extinction through German government incentives to grow biofuel-compatible crops.

Protests in Mexico were mounted against the rising cost of the tortilla, with the nation’s poor being most affected. It is incredibly ironic that those who push away from drilling in AWAR or in the Gulf of Mexico the most are those who repeatedly mock us all by saying they give one iota for the poor. No, they don’t, otherwise they would not promote biofuels which will hamper the poor more than anyone else.

If Germany’s barley problem spreads across the Atlantic, Mexico’s starving poor will protest for the price of tortillas without being able to rest while sipping a local brew in the neighborhood pub. What is this world coming to?