The impacts of such a development a

The impacts of such a development are staggering. The power balance of the world will be completely changed. Petro-dictatorships, where an endless flow of oil money keeps the population quiet, will no longer be able to look forward to oil at $50, $100, $150, and so on a barrel as oil supplies tighten. Power will be back in the hands of innovators rather than resource owners. The quest for dirty oil in remote and sensitive part of the world, whether the Arctic or the Alberta tar sands, will not make economic sense, and the environment will gain. The burning of gasoline in automobiles will no longer add much to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as the fuel will have soaked up an almost equal amount of carbon dioxide while it was being grown. The existing networks for delivering fuel to transportation (the hundred thousand gas stations in the Unites States, for example) won’t become redundant (as they would if we switched to electric autos), making plans for cutting emissions much less difficult.