THE CAR OF THE FUTURE - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 136

dollars. 93 h at's a hundred times the current cost of the lithium in the
typical electric car.
h ere is one more thing that dif ers between exotic metals and oil
when it comes to economic vulnerability and national security. If the
United States were to suddenly i nd itself without oil, the entire econ-
omy would shut down. If, instead, it were to suddenly i nd itself without
one or another special mineral, it might have to cease building new
electric cars or wind turbines. h e economic impact could be harsh,
particularly on a handful of industries, but it still would be far smaller
and more contained than if the United States ran short of oil. At er all,
people could still keep driving their existing cars.

m m m

When I visited the Ford R&D laboratories outside of Detroit in early
2012, my i rst stop wasn't to see their electric cars or to understand
their dependence on special minerals. My hosts, having heard that I was
interested in ei cient technologies, assumed I was there to talk about
the environment. h ey immediately took me to see all the automobile
components that they've managed to make out of hemp.
It wasn't an unreasonable instinct: some of the keenest interest in
cut ing oil consumption is driven by environmental concerns, and the
benei ts of cut ing oil consumption for confronting environmental
problems ot en seem like the clearest benei ts of all. Burn a million
barrels of oil and you pump about half a million tons of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere. h is means that every million barrels a day you
can shave of U.S. oil demand results in nearly two hundred million
tons less carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to nearly 4 percent of U.S.
emissions. h at's as big an impact as replacing about i t y big coal-i red
power plants with solar. 94
But the real climate consequences of get ing of of oil aren't quite so
straightforward. Lower U.S. oil consumption reduces world oil prices,
which encourages others to use more crude oil. h is partly of sets the
climate benei ts of U.S. conservation. h ere are good odds, though,
that this ef ect is pret y limited, for the same reason that the impact
that lower U.S. consumption has on prices isn't as big as some might