Lithium race hinges on battle over mine Story by DANIEL MOORE • Bloomberg News Illustration by NURI DUCASSI • Star Tribune

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The high-desert mountain pass overlooking alfalfa fields and RV parks doesn't look like a battleground that will shape the country's clean-energy future.

But when the rock samples here are pulverized, pulled apart and mixed with chemicals, they yield a metal increasingly seen as white gold: lithium, a critical ingredient for batteries used in electric vehicles, solar energy storage and consumer electronics.

In early 2021, the Trump administration approved plans for a $1 billion open-pit mine at Nevada's Thacker Pass, in a swath of government-owned land that covers 9 square miles above the country's largest lithium deposit. The Biden administration has since defended that decision.

Supporters say the mine built by Lithium Americas, a Canadian multinational, could produce enough lithium each year to match 2020's total global output. They also argue that expediting U.S. battery manufacturing will help the country shift away from fossil fuels .

But the project has run into fierce local opposition.

A judge is weighing a bid to block the mine brought by an unlikely coalition: a rancher who contends the operation will consume precious groundwater that sustains his herd; environmental groups that support electric vehicles but see the vast mining operation as too destructive; and tribal members determined to preserve the legacy, lifestyle and land of their ancestors.

The outcome will ripple beyond this corner of Nevada. As the Energy Department implements a $7 billion battery supply chain program and Congress' climate bill rolls out tax credits for electric-car makers, some see the state as ground zero for the fledgling industry.

"We can become the Lithium Valley here, based on everything else we have," said Dev Chidambaram, an engineering professor at the University of Nevada at Reno who started one of the country's first battery and energy storage academic programs. "It's better we do this, rather than somebody else."

The striking landscape on the Nevada- Oregon border that defines the Great Basin is loaded with treasures — gold, silver, mercury, uranium — that for centuries drew prospectors looking to strike it rich. It also provides a crucial habitat for sage grouse, raptors, golden eagles, elk and bighorn sheep, and features a sea of sagebrush and grasses that sustain grazing cattle herds.

Only one U.S. lithium mine operates today: Albemarle's Silver Peak in southwestern Nevada.

In recent years, Lithium Americas' predecessor company developed a plan to also extract it around Thacker Pass. That coincided with Washington's push to wean off imports from adversarial countries — extracting and processing lithium has been cheaper in South America and China — and rising demand from EV makers.

Global lithium prices soared more than 400% in 2021, and the surge looks likely to continue. For mining companies, the race is on to win approvals and keep pace.

Thacker Pass sits amid a largely rural area with an economy focused on agriculture, mining and roadside businesses that cater to travelers along Route 95 .

Maxine Redstar is chairwoman for the area's Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe. The pandemic had shut down tribal council offices and limited interaction, so she didn't learn the Trump administration had approved the mine until a few weeks after the decision in early 2021, she said. It felt like a slap in the face.
"I reached out to [Bureau of Land Management] and said: 'OK, hang on. Let's back up,'" Redstar recalled .

Her goal was to protect the land and water. The reservation's drinking water is still contaminated by a mercury mine that closed in the 1970s .
But she also thought about the project's potential to lift the next generation. Through 2021, Redstar had meetings with the Biden-led land bureau and mine officials. She left with assurances the site would be well regulated.

At the same time, tribal members who opposed the mine were building momentum. They formed People of Red Mountain and joined other tribal groups .

Last year, they joined forces with Edward Bartell , a rancher who has lived in the area since 2008, tending to more than 500 cattle that graze on BLM-leased land in the mountains above the Lithium Americas site and on 960 acres he owns below the site.

Trucks would haul sulfur within feet of the elementary school where his wife, Brenda, teaches. Two 350-foot-high dumps with a capacity of 354 million cubic yards of mine waste would tower over the dirt road he uses to check on his grazing cattle in the mountains.

"They put this eco-friendly label on it," Bartell said. "We see it as an environmental nightmare."

In February 2021, Bartell and his ranch sued the bureau over its decision, alleging "irreparable harm" to fish, wildlife, wetlands and stream flows .

By last summer, the People of Red Mountain and two other tribal groups had joined the case .

In Washington, the $369 billion climateand-tax law enacted in August includes tax credits for electric vehicles that, by the end of 2023, source 40% of their battery minerals from North America or U.S. trade partners.

For tribal member Daranda Hinkey, 24, the Thacker Pass project has been a possible blessing in disguise. It brought the college graduate home to the reservation where her father grew up and has mobilized people who had never been active in Indigenous rights.
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"In our ceremonies, we pray to water, we pray with water," she said . "The environmental concerns are cultural concerns. I don't see the line between them."

​Earning trust is critical  ​ OUTSWIMMING THE SHARKS ​Eliza Doolittle, the main character in the Broadway musical "My Fair Lady," makes a salient point about respect when she tells a visitor: "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a common flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a common flower girl and always will. But I know that I shall always be a lady to Colonel Pickering, because he always treats me like a lady and always will." If you treat people like winners, they will act like winners.

​The secret is to find something to respect in everyone you deal with.
Conflict is all around us.

Same with opinions. We may think we are accepting of others, but people see the world and all its issues differently.

Are you respectful if someone has a different opinion from yours?
Look for common ground.

Chances are that you have something in common. I have many friends with opposing viewpoints, but we have a mutual interest in something.
Being respectful is a valuable quality, both personally and professionally. It's important to treat people with courtesy and politeness.

It also helps to have an open mind and be willing to hear opposing opinions. Too many people want to cast judgment before they even hear an opposing point of view. Treat others how you want to be treated.

The word "courtesy" literally means "the way of the court." This means acting like you would in the king's court.

Displaying the same actions and attitudes appropriate in the presence of royalty is a good guide for all our everyday dealings with others. Because when you treat others better than they are accustomed to being treated, their response is almost always positive.

You also need to be sensitive to the feelings of others.

You might not even realize that your comments are hurtful.
Words are powerful, so speak with kind words.

Being a good listener and giving people your full attention also is a must. If you want people to listen to you, you must listen to them.

And if you commit to something, follow through. If you say you are going to do something, do it. Bailing out is disrespectful.

Trust is a must. I am convinced that T-R-U-S-T is the most important five-letter word in business — not sales or money (or any other replaceable commodities). Trust can be fragile, especially in the workplace. Once it's broken, few companies, managers or employees ever win it back.

Don't gossip. The damage of gossip is not easily undone.

So often the harm that gossip inflicts is irrevocable. And the gossiper's reputation takes a big hit, because others are concerned that you can't be trusted with their information.

Be inclusive. Try to involve everyone who wants to participate.

Have you ever been in a group where you seem to be invisible, with others speaking about topics that don't involve you, and your presence is ignored? Don't put others in that position.

Consider this your chance to change your little corner of the world. Make your behavior a shining example for others to emulate. You won't have any regrets for showing respect.

Mackay's Moral: Respect — give it to get it.

Harvey Mackay is a Minneapolis businessman. Contact him at 612-378- 6202 or email harvey@mackay.com.

SEA LEVELS TO RISE SHARPLY By SETH BORNSTEIN Associated Press NASA scientists flew to eastern Greenland in 2019 to track melting Ice from climate change.

Zombie ice from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10 inches on its own, according to a study released Monday.

Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers. That's because the parent glaciers are getting less replenishing snow.

Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

"It's dead ice. It's just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet," Colgan said in an interview.

"This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate [emissions] scenario we take now."

Study lead author Jason Box, a glaciologist at the Greenland survey, said it is "more like one foot in the grave."

These large icebergs in eastern Greenland were photographed in 2019. Zombie ice from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea levels by at least 10 inches, new study says.

Box collaborated with scientists based at institutions in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.S. to assess the extent of ice loss already locked in by human activity.

Melt rates have been increasing in the past two decades, and Greenland is the largest single ice-based contributor to the rate of global sea-level rise, surpassing contributions from both the larger Antarctic ice sheet and from mountain glaciers around the world. Greenland lies in the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the world.

The unavoidable 10 inches in the study is more than twice as much sea level rise as scientists had previously expected from the melting of Greenland's ice sheet. The study in the journal Nature Climate Change said it could reach as much as 30 inches.

By contrast, last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected a range of 2 to 5 inches for likely sea level rise from Greenland ice melt by the year 2100. What scientists did for the study was look at the ice in balance.

In perfect equilibrium, snowfall in the mountains in Greenland flows down and recharges and thickens the sides of glaciers, balancing out what's melting on the edges. But in the past few decades there's less replenishment and more melting, creating imbalance. Study authors looked at the ratio of what's being added to what's being lost and calculated that 3.3% of Greenland's total ice volume will melt no matter what happens with the world cutting carbon pollution, Colgan said.

"I think starving would be a good phrase," for what's happening to the ice, Colgan said.
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One of the study authors said that more than 120 trillion tons of ice is already doomed to melt from the warming ice sheet's inability to replenish its edges. When that ice melts into water, if it were concentrated only over the United States, it would be 37 feet deep.

This is the first time scientists calculated a minimum ice loss — and accompanying sea level rise — for Greenland, one of Earth's two massive ice sheets that are slowly shrinking because of climate change from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

Scientists used an accepted technique for calculating minimum committed ice loss, the one used on mountain glaciers for the entire giant frozen island.

Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study but said it made sense, said the committed melting and sea level rise is like an ice cube put in a cup of hot tea in a warm room.

"You have committed mass loss from the ice," Alley said in an email. "In the same way, most of the world's mountain glaciers and the edges of Greenland would continue losing mass if temperatures were stabilized at modern levels because they have been put into warmer air just as your ice cube was put in warmer tea."

Alley said the fact that researchers remain uncertain about how the planet's ice sheets will change and raise global sea levels shows the need for more research. "The problems are deeply challenging, will not be solved by wishful thinking, and have not yet been solved by business-as-usual," he said.

But Alley added that it is clear that the more we let the planet warm, the more the seas will rise. Although 10 inches doesn't sound like much, that's a global average. Some coastal areas will be hit with more, and high tides and storms on top of that could be even worse, so this much sea level rise "will have huge societal, economic and environmental impacts," said Ellyn Enderlin, a geosciences professor at Boise State University.

A 1-foot rise in global sea levels would have severe consequences. If the sea level along the U.S. coasts rose by an average of 10 to 12 inches by 2050, a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found, the most destructive floods would take place five times as often, and moderate floods would become 10 times as frequent.

Other countries — low-lying island nations and developing ones, like Bangladesh — are even more vulnerable. These nations, which have done little to fuel the higher temperatures that are now thawing the Greenland ice sheet, lack the billions of dollars it will take to adapt to rising seas.

Time is the key unknown here and a bit of a problem with the study, said two outside ice scientists, Leigh Stearns of the University of Kansas and Sophie Nowicki of the University of Buffalo.

The researchers in the study said they couldn't estimate the timing of the committed melting, yet in the last sentence they mention, "within this century," without supporting it, Stearns said.

Colgan said that the team doesn't know how long it will take for all the doomed ice to melt, but making an educated guess it would probably be by the end of this century or at least by 2150.

Colgan said this is actually all a best-case scenario. The year 2012 (and to a different degree 2019) was a huge melt year, when the equilibrium between adding and subtracting ice was most out of balance. If Earth starts to undergo more years like 2012, Greenland melt could trigger 30 inches of sea level rise, he said.

Those two years seem extreme now, but years that look normal now would have been extreme 50 years ago, he said.

"That's how climate change works," Colgan said. "Today's outliers become tomorrow's averages."

The Washington Post contributed to this report.

"The problems are deeply challenging [and] will not be solved by wishful thinking."
Penn State glaciologist Richard Alley

Here is an  short excerpt from Al Gore's presentation "An Inconvenient Truth."

        (Stay with it - It makes sense and is scary as hell!)    Harv