Watch for the Next Shoe to Drop on Electric Cars

If everyone switches from gasoline to electric cars, with super-duper batteries that will last 70 miles instead of 45, what a wonderful world it would be. Maybe.

It behooves us to remember that just because we will be burning nothing under the hood, that doesn't mean that nothing has to burn. Indeed, something must burn somewhere.

Timothy Carney at The Washington Examiner, notes today that ethanol was once regarded as a clean source of fuel before reality set in.

However promising a gasoline-free automobile may sound, anyone who followed the government’s mad rush to ethanol fuel in recent years has to worry about the clean promise of the electric car yielding dirty results.

Ethanol — an alcohol fuel made from corn or other plants — has been pushed relentlessly on the American people by a Congress under the influence of a powerful ethanol lobby. Touted as a clean fuel, the government-created ethanol boom has contributed to water pollution, soil erosion, deforestation and even air pollution.

Lithium could be the new ethanol, thanks to the government push for electric cars. Lithium is an element found in nature, and lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of the next generation of electric cars. Compared with lead acid (the standard car battery) and nickel metal hydride (the batteries in today’s hybrids), lithium-ion batteries are less toxic, more powerful and longer lasting.

But what would happen if electric cars and these batteries gain wide use?

Do you feel a big "uh, oh!" coming?

Before we even get to the batteries, recall that although all-electric, plug-in cars emit nothing, somebody needs to burn something for the car to move. Here, the burning happens at the power plant instead of under your hood.

The Department Energy estimates that coal provides half our electricity. A recent Government Accountability Office study reported that a plug-in compact car, if it is recharged at an outlet drawing its juice from coal, provides a carbon dioxide savings of only 4 to 5 percent. A plug-in sport utility vehicle provides a CO2 savings of 19 to 23 percent.

If the cleaner and cheaper fuel of a plug-in causes someone to drive even a bit more, it’s a break-even on CO2. GAO co-author Mark Gaffigan raised the question to CNSNews.com; “If you are using coal-fired power plants and half the country’s electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?”

More bad news: Lithium is mostly found in South America, and about half of that in (currently socialist) Bolivia.

The GAO report warns that “extracting lithium from locations where it is abundant, such as in South America, could pose environmental challenges that would damage the ecosystems in those areas.”

Those more concerned with energy independence than green fuels also have reason to doubt electric cars: About half of the world’s lithium reserves are in Bolivia. A major shift to lithium-powered cars “could substitute reliance on one foreign resource [oil] for another [lithium],” the GAO writes.

There's more. Educate yourself.