There is a perfect example of sophisticated public-power thinking along these lines in a 2023 report from the Climate and Community Project (now the Climate & Community Institute). In “Achieving Zero Emissions with More Mobility and Less Mining,” the authors approach American transportation planning and EVs from a social-metabolic, public-power perspective: Instead of looking at the problem from one side, they examine a few different variables, including lithium demand, average battery size, rate of vehicle ownership, and battery recycling.ii The paper offers four different planning scenarios, ranging from mere electrification to a deep transformation in land use and urban design that would increase walking, biking, and the use of public transit.13 Profit and even cost of development are not considered. The report’s real virtue isn’t the revelation that the United States can deeply reduce its incipient demand for rare-earth metals by moving away from car dependence—that’s simple. The point is the kind of planning-thinking that a public-power perspective enables, the kind of thinking in which a neighborhood bus schedule in California is connected to a mine in Australia. Anything less than that is willful ignorance. Among the benefits of the low-lithium scenarios, the report concludes, are mitigated harms of lithium mining, reduced geopolitical tensions with regard to control over mineral deposits, safer communities, and achieved climate targets. Such a scenario would also be in line with public power–style efforts in mining countries to capture more of the value chain—think Chile’s nationalization of its lithium and Indonesia’s successful ban on the export of unrefined nickel—which means richer countries paying more for less.14 This equalization of global exchange is a basic requirement for what’s called a just transition. Those are the kinds of planetary goals Huber refers to, the ones even well-intentioned capitalists are not able to achieve because they require social planning at a level that is above the capitalist pay grade.