Richard Branson's secret fuel alternative

Richard Branson:

We’ve put quite a lot of money to invest in alternate fuels, one billion over the next four years…The money is going into a whole series of different things like building ethanol plants, solar, wind power and we are also working on developing a new kind of fuel which I can’t say much about, but which is quite exciting.

I'm sure it's terribly exciting for those who can no longer afford to eat because a ton of smug yuppies put a huge demand on the corn and soybean market and drove up prices.

From the NYT:

Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.

The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture.

And we're just getting started with this biofuels thing. We won't have food riots in Central and South America for awhile yet, but get past that, and the people will be too weak to protest.

And look at that Branson smile! Don't you want to jump on the band wagon? Wouldn't it be cool to put an ethanol sticker on your bumper and take back some of the smug your Prius driving neighbor stole from you? Then, all you have to do is refuse to believe that your biofuel puts just as much CO2 into the air as the fossil variety. And ignore the cries of people struggling to survive because you wanted to make an almost trivial difference in a gas that doesn't contribute more than 10% to mix of "greenhouse gases". Maybe along with the ethanol bumper-sticker they should give you one that says, "Let them eat cake".