Stop Calling Green Energy ‘Clean’

by Cayte Bosler, June 9, 2021 for Columbia Climate School

I wake at a destined deathbed. Unheeded truths hang like a pall in the air.

At first I smile, cradled in a dusty tent, surrounded by the wintering grounds that belong to the many beings of Thacker Pass in Northern Nevada. Meadowlarks perform their morning songs: pure whistles that descend to gurgling warbles. I delight in how they greet the sun that is sending its first showers over the snow-laden Santa Rosa mountains. The century-old sagebrush becomes more upright; their fragrant wands drink in the slanted light. Spiders, who make a living when night pours in, find sleep in the shrubby branches. Pronghorn antelope nurture their yearlings, cloaked in the flowering mountain faces where golden eagles nest into the certainty of stone. This vitality beckons the dawn of day. Each morning is new, fresh, and full of wildlife conspiring to live.

But thoughts of death are never far. The meadowlarks’ songs will be lost to the whir of machines.

Under the steppe is one of the largest known lithium resources in the world, enough to account for an estimated one-fourth of the global demand.

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The activists camping out at Thacker Pass potentially face state-sanctioned force and legal repercussions now threatening others throughout the United States who protest extractive projects. Bills to increase punishment for impeding the operations of extractive infrastructure are sweeping the country in response to a public surge of resistance and protest, like the opposition to the proposed expansion of the Line 3 pipeline, which marshals oil from Canada’s tar sands to the United States.

To those I speak with at the camp, it’s worth the risk to fight for a place the greater culture has sacrificed. The ecologies and wildlife corridors for rare birds, mountain lions, porcupines and many more remain intact — a rarity, given that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction driven largely by degraded and ruined habitat. The planet loses an estimated 200 species a day with no signs of this hemorrhaging slowing down. Extractive industries like mining account for 80% of species loss.

Part of the problem is when harms are concealed in premises about the “greater good.” To be clear, the greater good at Thacker Pass is a big batch of electric cars for the privileged, at the expense of safe drinking water for animals, Indigenous and ranching communities and anyone in proximity. Over its projected 46-year span, the mine is expected to draw billions of gallons of groundwater in an already water-stressed region, potentially contaminating it with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to the final environmental impact statement. The study also shows the mine would likely exceed Nevada state limits for water pollution.

Read the full article at Columbia Climate School.