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lithium

A Rare Plant Got Endangered Species Protection This Week, but Already Faces Threats to Its Habitat

Lithium led Tiehm’s buckwheat to evolve on a 10-acre plot in Nevada. Now the flower is threatened both by a mine for the metal that’s critical for the energy transition and grazing cattle.

By Wyatt Myskow

Tiehm's buckwheat flower. Credit: Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity
Thacker Pass, in the far northern reaches of Nevada, permits have been approved for a massive lithium mine, drawing protest from the local Indigenous population, ranchers, and environmentalists. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Powering Electric Cars: the Race to Mine Lithium in America’s Backyard

By Aime Williams, The Financial Times

A rare earth elements magnetic separation loop system at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The equipment is used to extract rare earth elements from brines. Credit: Andrea Starr/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Inside Clean Energy: In a World Starved for Lithium, Researchers Develop a Method to Get It from Water

By Dan Gearino

Aerial view of a tailings dam-enbankment used to store byproducts of mining copper for the Minera Valle Central mining company, in Rancagua, Chile on May 31, 2019. Credit: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

Environmentalists in Chile Are Hoping to Replace the Country’s Pinochet-Era Legal Framework With an ‘Ecological Constitution’

By Katie Surma

The Lavendar Pit at Copper Queen Mine is seen in Bisbee, Arizona on July 24, 2020. Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

As the US Rushes After the Minerals for the Energy Transition, a 150-Year-Old Law Allows Mining Companies Free Rein on Public Lands

By Jim Robbins

People dance together at the protest camp at Thacker Pass, Nevada on Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. Earlier in the day People of Red Mountain organized a remembrance of a massacre of indigenous people nearby on the same date in 1865. Credit: Spenser Heaps

Plans To Dig the Biggest Lithium Mine in the US Face Mounting Opposition

By Cayte Bosler

EVs Challenge to Entrepreneurs: Find New Use for Spent Batteries

By Johanna Peace

500,000 Electric Cars Would Take 10% of World Lithium. Only.

By Stacy Feldman

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