Green Rush in Black Hills
South
Dakota’s Black Hills are no stranger to mining.
The hills — sacred land to the Lakota — have
long been exploited for gold and uranium
deposits, the lands scarred and rivers polluted
in the process. The area is a relatively small
(60 by 100 mile) island of lush trees and
rolling hills amid a vast expanse of grasslands,
but one in every five acres has an active mining
claim. Now, mining companies are eyeing the
region for another resource:
lithium.
In the last decade,
global lithium production has quadrupled,
predominately coming from two places. The first
is a region in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina
known as the “Lithium
Triangle.” Lithium
sourced from this region is found in salt flats
and extracted from pools of salty brine through
an evaporation process. The second is Western
Australia, where the mineral is mined from
bedrock in places like Western Australia and
Zimbabwe. Mining companies are preparing for
similar endeavors in the United States in
Nevada, South Dakota, North Carolina, and
more.
Welcome to the
“white gold rush” to procure lithium, a vital
element used to produce the batteries that power
the electric cars, solar cells, and other
technologies of the green energy transition.
This rush is in its initial stages, but already
the same actors who capitalized on past oil and
mineral rushes are positioned to continue
business as usual. This time, climate change is
being exploited to justify the same harmful
extractive practices.
Journalist Steward
Sinclair reports on the mining industry’s
mounting interest in South Dakota’s lithium
resources and the Indigenous-led effort to
protect the Black Hills from further
extraction.
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