The rise of electric vehicles is disrupting life in a small Western community
People rarely talk about the quiet on northern Nevada’s Thacker Pass, although besides the rolling, sage-filled hills below the Double H and Montana mountains and the empty, so-blue-it-hurts-a-little sky, the quiet demands your attention.
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This corner of northern Nevada is not often the subject of both local and national news stories. But the valley has erupted in controversy the past few months as Lithium Nevada moved onto the next stage of its proposed lithium mine on Thacker Pass.
As the country tackles ambitious new climate change goals, lithium production — a key mineral for the batteries that power electric vehicles — is slated to be a part of that future. But people like Muratore are beginning to question what the cost will be to realize a greener future and the community they believe could be destroyed in the process.
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With the final environmental impact statement completed by the Bureau of Land Management, the day the operation might break ground (aside from the dirt roads and weather station already in place) seems ever nearer. Ranchers in the communities of Orovada and King’s River are fighting the mine (Muratore joined Great Basin Resource Watch, an environmental group that filed a lawsuit) and activists have been rotating in and out of the proposed site, staging an occupation.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-rise-of-electric-vehicles-is-disrupting-life-in-a-small-western-community/ar-BB1fna59?li=BBnb7Kz
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The demand for Lithium, Cobalt and other elements that must be mined somewhere is growing at a record pace.
The problem is that mining those minerals creates huge environmental risks. We don't normally see such mining, since most of it takes place in second and third-world nations, out of sight and out of public awareness. We don't like mining in the United States, because it is a nasty industry that must destroy natural places to obtain the ore being sought.
So, demand is triggering plans to mine lithium here. But, at what cost to the environment?
Are we sure this is what we want to do? I'm not.
Here's a lithium processing facility. Lithium is mined in old salt deposits from dry lakebeds. It goes through a process of evaporative concentration in water based brines:
https://thumbor.forbes.com/thumbor/711x511/
Here's a photo of an proposed Tesla open pit lithium mine on the bed of an ancient dry lake bed:
They think they can sell it as, it's huge dry desert with no plants or animals to compromise environmentally. Which is obviously flawed thinking at its core. And lithium is only a temporary solution as you stated. The worlds easily available lithium supplies could very well run out before Bidens 2050 carbon neutral plan. That would force the mining of lithium from harder to get to deposits and result in far more destructive environmental impacts down the line. Hopefully with foresight and learning from past mistakes we can keep developing new and more efficient ways of extracting energy from the natural world to meet demand. But that doesn't seem to be human nature 
