Two scenes. Two storytellers. Two visions for a climate-altered American West.<\/p>\n
On an overcast spring morning, I hopped a low metal fence off a lonely dirt road in the Nevada desert, following botanist Naomi Fraga. She assured me she\u2019d done this before \u2014 these were public lands, after all. We were 100 miles east of Yosemite, out in the middle of nowhere, except I\u2019d long since learned there\u2019s no such thing as nowhere. The desert may look barren, but its mountains and valleys teem with life. And precious metals.<\/p>\n
Fraga led me up a small hill, the soil chalky-white and rich with lithium, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. We moved slowly, not wanting to trample any endangered wildflowers.<\/p>\n
Wait, were those the flowers? The Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat I\u2019d come hundreds of miles to see?<\/p>\n
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\u201cVery tiny,\u201d Fraga confirmed. \u201cWhen it flowers, its flower stalks might come about 4 or 5 inches high.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt snows here in this elevation zone,\u201d she added, roughly 6,000 feet above sea level. \u201cIt\u2019s a very cold desert, and when it\u2019s cold, Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat is just lying in wait, waiting for spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a flower that\u2019s spurred high-stakes litigation, detailed scientific study and global news coverage, it was pretty ugly, at least in its dormant winter state. The clumps of gray-green buckwheat looked almost like mold.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Clumps of Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat near the planned Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine.<\/p>\n
(Sammy Roth \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
For Fraga, the flower\u2019s current appearance is beside the point. Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat doesn\u2019t grow anywhere else in the world \u2014 just here, across three square miles of Esmeralda County. She\u2019s enthralled by its role in an ecosystem of pollinators and bighorn sheep. She\u2019s awestruck by its ability to survive winter snow and 120-degree heat. <\/p>\n
\u201cI just have an enormous amount of respect for the organisms that make this their home,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel like it brings a reverence for harsh living, and ways in which life will find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question now: Can Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat survive a lithium mine?<\/p>\n
Fraga doesn\u2019t think so. Bernard Rowe disagrees.<\/p>\n
The day after I met Fraga, Rowe took me to the same area. We drove down the dirt road past the metal fence, to a spectacular basin where his employer, Australia-based Ioneer, is preparing to dig for lithium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good thing is, this is a natural amphitheater, and it is hidden from really everywhere,\u201d Rowe said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got the ring of volcanic rocks that completely surrounds this basin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sight lines don\u2019t matter to an endangered flower. But contrary to claims made by conservationists, Rowe said the Rhyolite Ridge mine won\u2019t drive Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat to extinction. He noted that mining activities won\u2019t touch any subpopulations of Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat \u2014 although the quarry could come as close as a dozen feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to make sure we put buffer zones. We had to map all the plants,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
So who\u2019s right?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bernard Rowe, managing director at Ioneer, discusses the company\u2019s planned lithium mine in Esmeralda County, Nevada.<\/p>\n
(Jonathan Shifflett)<\/p>\n
It would be easy to make the company look like the bad guy. After all, here\u2019s a profit-seeking foreign corporation seeking to exploit America\u2019s public lands in the name of environmental progress. Potentially at the expense of an endangered species. With only a band of hardy activists standing in the way.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good story. Arguably an accurate story. And yet…<\/p>\n
And yet the climate crisis makes everything complicated. To phase out oil and natural gas \u2014 whose combustion fills the air with deadly pollution and fuels devastating storms, wildfires and heat waves \u2014 we\u2019ll need enormous amounts of lithium, for electric vehicle batteries and solar energy storage to keep the lights on after dark. Most of the world\u2019s lithium is currently produced in Australia and China, and at destructive evaporation ponds<\/a> in Chile.<\/p>\n Those geopolitical dynamics help explain why lithium mining has garnered bipartisan support even as President Trump kills other clean energy projects<\/a>. The Biden administration approved Rhyolite Ridge<\/a> last year, then backed the developer with a $996-million loan<\/a>. The Trump administration has let both decisions stand.<\/p>\n Already, Rowe estimated, the U.S. consumes 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year for electric car batteries.<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time you add in grid batteries, hand tools, recreational vehicles, cellphones … it will soon be hundreds of thousands of tons,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd into the future, it\u2019ll be 1 million tons of domestic demand.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say the Rhyolite Ridge\u2019s critics are right, and the mine would, in fact, annihilate Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat. Is that a reasonable price to pay for ditching oil-burning cars and shutting down gas-fired power plants?<\/p>\n The answer might depend on your vantage point.<\/p>\n Botanist Naomi Fraga examines Tiem\u2019s buckwheat on a hill near the planned site of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine.<\/p>\n (Jonathan Shifflett)<\/p>\n Take Fraga. She was born and raised in Southern California\u2019s San Gabriel Valley and is now a botany professor at Claremont Graduate University. She started doing research in Nevada<\/a> a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic. She sees Rhyolite Ridge as part of a landscape so unique it might be a national monument were it in California.<\/p>\n Rowe, meanwhile, grew up in an Australian farm town. He was inspired to study geology by a university lecturer\u2019s tales of travel and adventure, which led him to the mining industry. He\u2019s spent 20 years splitting his time between Sydney and Nevada, where he helped identify the value in Rhyolite Ridge\u2019s mineral deposits.<\/p>\n Part of the value is lithium. The rest is boron, a durable, heat-resistant metalloid. Rowe could riff for hours about the vast array of products that require boron, including steel alloys, carpet fibers, car parts, wind turbine magnets and many types of glass, including cookware, windshields, TV screens and thermal insulation.<\/p>\n Right now, Turkey is the world\u2019s top boron producer<\/a> by far. Rhyolite Ridge was a rare find.<\/p>\n \u201cMost other metal deposits \u2014 copper, gold \u2014 they can be quite young, in terms of a few million years old. Or they can be hundreds of millions, even a billion years old,\u201d Rowe said. \u201cYou don\u2019t find old boron deposits.\u201d<\/p>\n For Rowe, Rhyolite Ridge is treasure buried in plain sight. For Fraga, it\u2019s just the latest example of callous outsiders attempting to exploit Nevada\u2019s public lands \u2014 a history that began with silver mining and continues with housing development<\/a>, solar farms<\/a> and nuclear waste storage<\/a>. Nevada is already home to America\u2019s only active lithium mine, not far from Rhyolite Ridge. The Thacker Pass mine is also under construction<\/a> near the Oregon border.<\/p>\n Angelenos driving electric vehicles ought to think about how their choices affect Nevada, Fraga suggested.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a real tension there, where we need to avert the worst of the climate crisis. But in doing so, we can cause real harm to ecosystems,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n So how do we resolve that tension?<\/p>\n Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat in bloom.<\/p>\n (Naomi Fraga)<\/p>\n I put off writing this column for three months because I didn\u2019t have a good answer. How could I defend the mine when it might doom an endangered species? Yet how could I condemn it when we need lithium, and when so few large-scale clean energy projects don\u2019t face environmental conflicts<\/a>?<\/p>\n As far as the sparring parties are concerned, the facts speak for themselves. Ioneer points to a biological opinion<\/a> from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that its mine is \u201cnot likely to jeopardize the continued existence\u201d of Tiehm\u2019s buckwheat or \u201cresult in the destruction or adverse modification of its critical habitat.\u201d<\/p>\n Conservationists counter that when the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the flower an endangered species<\/a> in 2022, the agency described \u201cmineral exploration and development\u201d as one of the \u201cgreatest threats\u201d to the flower. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Shoshone Defense Project and Great Basin Resource Watch sued federal officials<\/a> over their approval of the mine last year, contending they rushed the environmental review. <\/p>\n It\u2019s possible we\u2019ll never know who\u2019s right. Ioneer is scrambling to secure new funding after the South African firm Sibanye-Stillwater \u2014 which was supposed to invest $490 million \u2014 backed out this year<\/a> amid falling global lithium prices. Ioneer said this month it wouldn\u2019t start construction until at least March<\/a>. If and when the company is ready to start digging, the groups in the lawsuit could ask the judge to block construction.<\/p>\n But whatever happens at Rhyolite Ridge, these types of questions aren\u2019t going away \u2014 especially in the American West, where public lands have traditionally supplied big cities with energy, water and food. We\u2019ll need to be more thoughtful than ever about how we use land. We\u2019ll need to get comfortable evaluating trade-offs.<\/p>\n In an ideal world, we\u2019d never have to choose between lithium mines and lovely flowers. Or at least, we\u2019d find ways to resolve these types of conflicts amicably \u2014 and quickly, because climate chaos is coming fast.<\/p>\n Sometimes it\u2019s possible. Alas, sometimes we\u2019ll have to choose.<\/p>\n This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox<\/a>. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth<\/a> on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social<\/a> on Bluesky.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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