Is Your Electric Car Worth the Extinction of a Species?

Tiehm’s buckwheat is a rare species of wildflower in the buckwheat family. Over millennia the plant adapted to soils rich in lithium and boron in the Silver Peak Range of Esmeralda County, Nevada.here 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, even though none of the metal has been yet excavated.

The clean energy transition is going to require huge tradeoffs, and the battle gearing up over a tiny flower on Rhyolite Ridge exemplifies one of the decisions countries will face. The U.S. needs domestically sourced lithium and boron, both of which are found in the rich soil of this stretch of Nevada high desert near the border of California, a stone’s throw from Death Valley National Park.

There are, of course, other flowers that these insects can pollinate, but scientists warn that humans should not just focus on preserving species that have value to humans. Once you become complicit in the extinction of one tiny plant, they say, you become complicit in much more. Which is why they are doing everything they can to stop the progress of what would be only the second operational lithium mine in the U.S., in the name of a relatively anonymous plant.

The BLM is in the process of preparing a draft environmental impact statement on the mine, which will likely come out this summer; interested groups will be able to comment and respond to it, and a final version is expected in early 2024, which is also when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will publish its opinion on whether the mine plan will negatively impact the buckwheat.

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