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Last time I posted a story about the Trifuel Lotus Exige I found myself being accused of acting like some kind of motor industry propagandist for bio-fuels.

But, after talking through some of the comments I fielded with Lotus, I’ve come back to have another go at setting the record straight.

Methanol certainly isn’t a perfect fuel – but it is a viable CO2-neutral, non-fossil source of power. Short of shifting the entire motoring population to battery power, or waiting for the hydrogen economy to get started, it’s as good an alternative as any at present.

It’s hard not to feel better about life, wandering around a neat and tidy southern Californian city with the sun shining. But I can guarantee that you’ll also breath much more easily in this state. Since the late 1960s, the California Air Resources Board...

I’m confused, not to mention being more than a bit frustrated. Why is it that as soon as the world’s automotive industry does as every card-holding greenie in the world wants, and begins to commit to strategies to reduce the carbon emissions associated with the 40 million new vehicles it produces every year, those same so-called climate champions simply find something else to whinge about?

I’ve just been reading a pathetic article about the Chevrolet Volt – the car that will become General Motors’ first ‘plug-in hybrid’. This dross suggested that the car simply didn’t matter; that its contribution to climate change would be minuscule while coal fuel power stations still existed. Rubbish.

As a parable of our times the biofuels debate is brilliantly instructive. It seems that as soon as a ‘new’ technology comes along, the forces of environmental conservatism want to knock it down instantly, regardless of the facts or that some risk is inevitable in industrial activity.

It’s not that long ago that industry visionary Richard Parry-Jones was linking biofuels to long-term average tailpipe emissions of 40g/km within a couple of decades, while Bentley used the Geneva show to announce its backing for biofuels by future-proofing its models to accept the new fuel.

History will likely remember Alistair Darling for several things, not least his visual similarity to a human badger. But there’s also the worrying possibility that future generations will look back on him as the Chancellor who killed off the affordable performance car.

Because now the dust has settled on yesterday’s budget statement it’s clear that it’s cheap, fast machinery that is set to suffer more than anything else.

Under the new regime, coming in from the 2010-11 financial year, anything that puts out over 225g/km of CO2 is going to be clobbered with a £750 registration tax and then £430 a year in road tax.

Anything that transgresses further – breaching the 255g/km barrier – will get hit for £950 when the plates get screwed on and £455 a year afterwards.

It looks like UK PLC may soon be doing business with Ratan Tata.

A line hidden way into Alistair Darling's budget announced "a £40 million research, development and demonstration programme, which will focus on low-carbon vehicle concepts and the acceleration of their commercialisation."