Vanityfox, I’ll watch the Kunstler video later tonight, I’m at work now. Regarding the rare earths necessary to make the EV’s, the new AC induction motors don’t use rare earths.
There’s lots of lithium in South America, China and Utah. I’ll agree that it’s going to be a challenge to get that much metal. But what’s the alternative? Somehow finding enough fossil fuels to pull out of the ground? What’s the difference? Fossil fuels or metals? The difference is that metals can be recycled and reused indefinitely while fossil fuels are gone forever when you burn them.
You question how much money it’s going to take to finance a hundred million Chevy Volts. Yes, I agree with you, this will be prohibitive. But alternatively, how much will it take to finance another 40 years of US hegemony to take by force all the remaining fossil fuels in the world? When the dollar collapse, will the US even be ABLE to do this? So it’s impossible, there simply isn’t enough energy available to the US to continue its insane growth spiral based on fossil fuels. It will end soon, whether Washington wants it to or not. Therefore, we should be spending what little resources we have left on getting off fossil fuels, not pulling more out of the ground.
I don’t really disagree with you, the future is going to be ugly. I think we should pull the bandaid off now wrt fossil fuels. Further subsidizing their price is only going to make things worse.