This is the kind of crud we get when "stakeholder capitalism" gains a foothold

 All that Great-Reset/Business-Roundtable-redefinition-of-a-company's-purpose hooey is beginning to play out in concrete and ill-advised ways.

Climate alarmists have been drumming their message into society's collective head so incessantly that it's leading to developments like Ford converting its venerable F-150 pickup truck to being completely electrically powered:

When Ford Motor Co. surveyed American truck owners last year, the automaker received a clear message: “Keep your hands off my truck.” Only 40 percent said they’d be “excited” about an electric pickup.

That truck, like it or not, is here. Now the question is whether consumers — and Congress — will join Ford and other automakers for the ride.

The Ford F-150, an iconic American brand with a seven-decade history, will go electric in 2022. President Joe Biden will tour the vehicle’s Dearborn, Michigan, factory on Tuesday in advance of Ford’s big reveal of the new truck, the Lightning, on Wednesday.

 

The president will make a case for his infrastructure plan, including $174 billion for electric vehicle technology and 500,000 vehicle charging stations. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has called the plan “left-wing social engineering,” but Ford likes the way Biden thinks.

The company is a key player in what has been a rapid political turnabout that has corporate America ahead of the Washington curve on climate policy. While their onetime Republican allies in Congress wield fossil fuels as weapons in a culture war, Ford and other companies are moving ahead without them.

“The politics around climate change haven’t caught up with where the stakeholder community is,” said Sasha Mackler, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project. “Big companies are making their own commitments and actually doing things with respect to the energy transition. The Ford F-150 is part of that.”

And it will be a particularly important case to watch. Pickups, especially the F-150, are deeply rooted in the American psyche and the economy. And their sales are heavily concentrated in conservative states where high-speed electric charging stations are few and far between. 

In Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota, more than 40 percent of all vehicles sold are pickups. In South Dakota, Alaska and Idaho, more than a third of all vehicles sold are pickups, according to a Cox Automotive analysis.

Those are also states with the lowest density of high-speed charging stations, according to Department of Energy data, and could be the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s plan.

This is precisely a case of the pointy-headed administrative overlord class - government, corporations, and activist groups  - coming together to dictate what consumers will be able to buy. So much for millions of decisions being made every day on the micro level that provide signals to the market as to what companies ought to produce. This is the truck that will be available to you, and you will damn well like it.

And you will cough up billions of tax dollars for charging stations. 

Not only is this a real throat-squeeze on economic liberty, it's costly as hell:

The push for lithium stems from the electric vehicle craze that's unfolded in the last year. States such as California and Washington have said they'll phase out gasoline cars. Tesla has become the world's most valuable automaker. Automakers like VW and GM have begun to invest billions to transition to electric cars and trucks. Electric vehicles are a cornerstone of President Biden's infrastructure plan, with a $174 billion investment. 

Electric vehicles can't happen without lithium — and a lot of it. Lithium is a critical mineral in the batteries that power electric vehicles. The world will need to mine 42 times as much lithium as was mined in 2020 if we will meet the climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, according to the International Energy Agency. Existing mines and projects under construction will meet only half the demand for lithium in 2030, the agency said.

The United States has only one active lithium mine today. The country will need 500,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2030, according to research by RK Equity, a New York firm that advises investors on lithium. The entire global lithium carbonate equivalent market last year was 325,000 metric tons, RK Equity partner Howard Klein told CNN Business. 

What would be involved in talking sense into a critical mass of the public so that it came to see that dense, cheap and readily available energy forms are just fine for humankind to extract and use?

It may be too late, now that corporations are rushing to be told what to do in order to be able to congratulate themselves on their virtue.