On the day we’re investigating the truth about corn ethanol, and rapidly reaching the conclusion that the American public is being robbed blind when it comes to government subsidies for the stuff, we get robbed ourselves.

MeiMei, Ben, Jos and I are filming interviews and stand-ups near the arch in St Louis for the afternoon. But after two straight days of rain and another of fierce winds, we don’t have enough b-roll. So Duff, Pablo, and Ali take the mini-van rental north along the Mississippi to find shots of dams, levees, barges, people using the river for recreation — whatever they can get. We don’t have a map or a local guide, so they simply follow the coastline. Little do we know they’re driving deep into a depressed area in a city infamous for its high crime rate.

As we’re mid-interview with Daniel Romano, a journalist and former Green party candidate for Senator of Illinois, Jocelyn’s phone rings. “It’s all over!” Ali cries from the other end of the line.

Jos listens calmly, then fills us in. “Some guys broke into the van when the team was filming just 200 meters away. They got two of the Canon still cameras and Pablo’s and Ali’s bags, which included both Ben and Ali’s passports. No one was hurt, thank heavens. They’ve called the cops so they can file a report.”

Two hours of panicked phone calls to credit card companies, our producer Justine in DC, and the Australian Embassy ensue on our end. The crime victims talk to the cops then make a trip to the airport to swap out the mini-van, which now has a broken window. We all meet up at a sports bar in downtown St Louis for dinner and the debrief.

“I heard this crash and went running,” says Pablo. “I saw the guys taking off with our stuff. They dropped the camera bag at least when they saw me. All our media was in there.” By this he means the only copy of video footage from the past four days, which would’ve been a devastating loss.

Duff adds his version. “When I saw the commotion, I thought Ali and Pablo were fighting. Ali had her hands up in the air; Pablo was pacing back and forth looking pissed. Then I saw the glass everywhere. I couldn’t believe it!”

“Seriously, you guys,” I say, “We’ve traveled all around the world — to India, to South Africa, a place that is world-renowned for its crime, to the Middle East — and nothing happened to us. Here we are back in the US, and we get robbed. How ironic.”

The good news is we’re all okay. We did lose some valuable equipment, but it was insured. And the president of Lewis and Clark Community College, who hosted us for a roundtable discussion with scientists and representatives of environmental non-profits and the US government earlier this morning, offered to help get the Aussies on the flight to New Orleans tomorrow with only photocopies of their passports. In short, all is well.

Let’s talk about the other heist—the one being pulled on our entire country by certain lobbyists for agro-business and political representatives. In 2006, the US government paid $7 billion in subsidies to farmers for the production of corn ethanol, a biofuel.

But corn ethanol is like the punch line of a Jon Stewart joke on The Daily Show: it offers no environmental advantages, and makes no sense from an economic standpoint. “It takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of corn ethanol,” comments John Chick of the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Corn also has a huge water footprint. This means if you take into account the amount of water it takes to produce corn, the cost to the environment is much higher. It required an average of 18 trillion gallons of water to produce 13.9 billion gallons of ethanol in the US in 2006. This is more water than the entire US population consumes for domestic use in a year, yet it only replaces three percent of our fuel needs.

So why are taxpayers footing the bill?

“It’s ridiculous,” says Christine Favilla of the Sierra Club, an environmental NGO. “We should absolutely be looking at other crops for biofuels.”

Bill Franz of the Environmental Protection Agency, a government regulatory body, has strong feelings on the subject, as well. “Instead of using corn for ethanol, farmers could be planting native species such as prairie grass and switchgrass, which don’t need much maintenance after the first year. In fact, you don’t even need to irrigate or fertilize these perennial plants, so the demands placed on water resources and the resulting pollution are far less.”

“With corn ethanol, we’re perpetuating a cycle that degrades our water supply,” Christine adds. “It’s not sustainable. Unfortunately, farmers are sticking to corn because they get financing for it. Let’s hope the current administration changes these policies and starts offering incentives for farmers to grow native grasses instead.”

Bill puts more of the responsibility on our shoulders. “It’s up to the public to tell the government what to do. This is a democracy; people are in charge. You have to speak out for what you want and make sure your public officials are doing their job right.”