Morally Inappropriate Fuels

I've long been a fan of alternate fuels and doing something to challenge car manufacturers to think of new ways to transport us without having to use oil, but this recent story on Treehugger kind of threw me for a loop:

Royal Dutch Shell, the world's top marketer of biofuels, considers using food crops to make biofuels "morally inappropriate" as long as there are people in the world who are starving, an executive said Thursday.

I'm not the biggest fan of ethanol but that and many alternate fuels are certainly based on crops that would otherwise be in the food chain. I've never thought about the point the executive brings up and it's certainly a good one. In a post fossil fuel world, we'll be making a lot of hard choices about how to balance keeping everyone fed and keeping everyone moving.