TIME • April 27, 2023
There is so much lithium on Rhyolite Ridge, a plot of land in southwestern Nevada, that Ford, Toyota, and Panasonic have all inked deals to buy it. So much lithium that maybe it doesn’t matter that this mine could cause a species to go extinct. After all, in the face of so much lithium, which is needed to power our clean energy future and is in short supply in the U.S., does the extinction of one little desert flower really matte? The solution, opponents of the mining argue, is simple: get lithium from somewhere else. The problem is, the other lithium sites are facing opposition from locals and environmentalists, too. A legislator in Maine presented a bill that would place a five-year moratorium on lithium mining in Maine, where experts say there are millions of tons of ore available. “We must examine the risks of lithium mining,” the legislator, Margaret O’Neil said when introducing her bill, “and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms.”