Mining for the Climate Season 2, Episode 4: “Long Haul”

Full Transcript

Susan: My name is Susan Frey. I am a farmer here in Orovada. I've lived here for about 20 years.

I'm one of the founding members of the Thacker Pass Working Group that sits down with a third-party facilitator and representatives from Lithium Americas to work through some of the issues that come up in our community related to the Thacker Pass project.

Gary: My name is Gary McKinney. I am a Shoshone Paiute here on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. I'm a lead scout for the Northern Nevada American Indian Movement chapter and spokesperson for the People of Red Mountain.   

We're a group of descendants that got together to help out the community when the lithium was coming to McDermott. 

Susan: I started out here working for Kings River Ranch during the summer time as a range management specialist. That's how I became familiar with the area and that's part of why Thacker Pass is special to me. It just feels like home.

I met my husband, who is a third-generation farmer here in Orovada and I've been there with him ever since and now we're raising the fourth generation on the farm.

Gary: We got ties to Thacker Pass with the massacre in the 1800s. They were facing kind of what we are today: displacement, reservations. So what they did was they created an avenue for that. And they called it a ghost dance, but it was to give the people hope. Like, all this is going on, but we gotta remember that we're actually part of Mother Earth here.

What we're doing today is we're still ringing bells. We're not giving up. 

Jessica: Behind the lawsuits and the rallies and the media that the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine has galvanized are people like Gary and Susan, people whose lives have been thrust into uncertainty, who are grappling with how to protect their communities and uphold what's important to them in the face of modest resources and often heavy histories.

The stories of Susan Frey and Gary McKinney demonstrate that challenges to the Thacker Pass mine take many forms and will continue long after the mine has been greenlit for construction.

Susan lives 30 miles southeast of Thacker Pass in Orovada, a town of about 250 residents that will receive the majority of the truck and bus traffic from the mine. Gary lives almost 100 miles northeast on the Duck Valley Reservation, a Paiute Shoshone community with deep cultural ties to Peehee Mu’huh, the Indigenous name for Thacker Pass.

They both feel a profound sense of duty to their community. They're both in the struggle against the mine for the long haul. In what follows, we'll hear about how Gary and Susan plan to live with and against the mine, and we'll consider the fate of the wider caldera.

This is the final episode of Season 2 of Mining for the Climate. I'm your host Jessica Ng.

Gary: This right here is the Owyhee River.

Jessica: We're in Gary's backyard behind his single story house on the Duck Valley Reservation in northeastern Nevada. Gary's kids peer at us from behind the blinds in the back of the house.

Gary's dressed in cowboy boots and blue jeans. He's wearing a black leather vest embroidered with an American Indian Movement emblem. He leans back in his folding chair with a hand-rolled cigarette pinched between his fingers and gestures toward the waterways in the distance. The rivers and streams, he explains, connect Duck Valley to the McDermitt Caldera.

Gary: It's the Upper Owyhees, it runs into the canyon there. And then it runs up into Oregon, and then the Little Owyhees drop down into McDermott. 

Jessica: Gary's ancestors relied upon these waterways for food.

Gary: We used to feed off the same ancestral food, the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout. But back in 1932, they dammed it in Wild Horse, and the ranchers up in Idaho have been picking water off. So our water level here is low. That still doesn't stop them from wanting to mine. They had to abandon a Rio Tinto copper mine fourteen-and-a-half miles upstream back in the 70s because it was contaminating the water there.

Jessica: Mines have been here for a long time. Gary's father worked for a gold mine for most of his life — one of the few sources of steady, dependable [00:05:00] work. Gold and mercury mines dot the Montana and Double H mountains that flank Orovada, a town whose name comes from the Spanish word for gold.

Susan also knows the long history of mining here firsthand and its effects on the land.

Susan: Our family's been here for a long time, along with a lot of other families, and a lot of these families have seen different mining operations come and go.

There's a large open-pit lake down to the south of this valley that's closest to our farm. According to the generations before when that was operating they were having to pump all of that water out. Our wells at our location started lowering quite a bit, started going dry.

So they've seen these impacts firsthand. They've seen the gold busts. They've seen the gold booms. They've seen the city of Winnemucca decrease in population by half and become essentially a ghost town. They've seen a lot of this stuff happen before, but the lithium mining is a new frontier for this area, and a whole lot of uncertainties.

Jessica: Susan looks thoroughly at home in Orovada in cowboy boots with blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and a baseball cap. We first met her in June 2023, and then again a year later, both times sitting at a table in the Orovada Community Hall. Susan worries that the Thacker Pass Mine will disrupt her family's livelihood and erode her sense of home.

Susan: We grow about 900 acres of alfalfa. We grow upwards around 80 to 100 acres of corn that we harvest on our own farm and feed to our own cattle herd. And we have about 500 head of cattle and we raise them up and sell the calves. 

Jessica: She has built fond memories over the years of Thacker Pass and the McDermott Caldera.

Susan: We took one hunting trip probably about 10 years ago and camped up there and spent quite a bit of time roaming around the hills in the area that the mine is going to be in.

I always go back to that particular trip when I think of what is going to change up there. It's going to just entirely change that landscape. And those are opportunities that maybe we're not going to get to take our kids to that area and do that kind of trip again with them.

Jessica: Both Susan and Gary first heard about the lithium mine during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Gary: I was working for the tribe then as a COVID sprayer. I'd be a janitor during the day, and then after five, I would put my white suit on and then I'd go to the offices and spray. I found out about Thacker Pass when my aunt was looking for a vehicle after tax time.

Jessica: So Gary made a profile on Facebook to help her find a vehicle.

Gary: My aunt started getting ahold of me and started hearing about this mine. I quit my job to make sure that I was making it to McDermitt, to Orovada, to Winnemucca, to these NDEP meetings to sit there and to ask those questions because you'll notice that there wasn't too many people like me that were in there asking the right questions. You know, what's gonna happen with the water?

Jessica: He started to get the word out about the mine and its risks on his reservation. One of the first things he did was make a sign that showed support for the Paiutes and Shoshones living closer to the proposed lithium mine. The sign read, “Duck Valley Indian Reservation stands in solidarity beside the people of Red Mountain.”

Gary: I did a walk through town around the reservation holding it. It's on one of those real big 65-inch TV boxes. I went with the permanent marker and wrote on it.

When I heard about it, I was like, “All right, what can I do?” So I wanted to raise awareness and have some type of support. So I started uptown and then went down Hospital Hill and went all the way around the reservation and stopped at this store here.

People honk. You know, they support. 

Jessica: Susan learned of the mine around the same time as Gary, though she had been aware for decades of lithium mining plans for the area.

Susan: My awareness of it is at least 20 years. There's been a lot of speculation up there, a lot of different companies coming in. It changed hands quite a few times. But as far as it being the scale of the mine that it is now, my first awareness of that was in early 2021 when they got their record of decision from the BLM.

Jessica: The record of decision was a key legal step that authorized the construction of the mine. In response, Susan got together with other residents of Orovada and formed the Thacker Pass Working Group. The toll on their time and emotions has been high.

Susan: We were having a lot of meetings at the beginning. I added it up at some point and we were spending at least eight to ten hours a week just on these meetings or being on phone conferences with people.

And we were coming into the meetings that were being facilitated with the mine management. We were having meetings on our own prior to those meetings so that we could get our own strategy together. 

I remember during the first year or more of our meetings with the mine coming out of every single meeting thinking, “Oh, this is so hard. I don't know if we can do this. I don't know if we're doing the right thing.” Tensions were really high. Emotions were really high.

I said, “Well, if it feels hard and it feels scary, we're probably pushing in the right direction. If it feels like it's too easy, we're probably not doing enough.”

Jessica: Meanwhile, Gary and other Paiute Shoshone tribal members and descendants formed the People of Red Mountain to create a structure for action outside of official tribal governments. One of their first acts was to establish a camp near the mine site in an effort to protect the land and exercise the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

I visited the camp in the summer of 2021, two years before the Mining for the Climate team first traveled to Thacker Pass. Several months later, on the People of Red Mountain’s Instagram account, Gary reflected on Camp Peehee Mu’huh as the autumn chill set in.

Gary: We're protecting it in the best way that we can, because we still care for our land and we still care for the animals that live on the land.   

We're not remaining idle anymore because we can't be phased out of this. We predate America. I'm going to fight for that. We're going to stay here. I'm going to be in solidarity with my Indian brothers and sisters out there and any of my other community members of other races. Out here at Camp Peehee Muh’huh, everybody's welcome. And at the same time too, we're all feeling this cold together, taking care for one another.

Jessica: The Thacker Pass Working Group started off with a similar position against the mine.

Susan: When we first learned that they had completed their EIS, they had put out the draft EIS for public comment, and then they got approval to go ahead with it, the community as a whole, myself included, we organized to try to find some way to stop this, was our initial goal.

There was a sense in the beginning that we wanted to try to fight.

Jessica: But their initial focus on stopping the mine soon faded from sight. 

Susan: And it took a while for myself and many other community members to understand that we did not have an option to stop it. We were not going to find the magic thing that was going to stop this. So we've come to a place of understanding that it's inevitable. There's an acceptance there.

There's a grieving and a mourning period that goes along with that.

Jessica: Susan remembers one of the meetings the working group had with mine management shortly after Lithium Nevada announced their multi-million-dollar deal with General Motors.  

Susan: All they had was good news, good news, good news. “We're super excited. It's going ahead.” And I said, “Everything that has happened that has been good for you has been another blow to this community.”

And I was able to tell them that the Thacker Pass area is important. For the communities that we represent, Orovada and Kings River, it's where we go camping. It's where we take our kids out in the hills. It's where we go hunting. And to see their celebration about every step closer that they're getting to tearing it all up and changing it forever, no matter how green or how carbon neutral they are, has been a grieving process for our community. 

Jessica: Today, with the mine's construction underway, Susan and her fellow working group members have shifted their efforts to a focus on supporting and shoring up the community's quality of life.

Susan: We're willing to stay at the table and work with them so that we can try to protect our community as best we can. The only shift that I've seen happen is the community itself understanding that we didn't get a choice in this.

Jessica: While the Thacker Pass Working Group came to terms with their limited leverage, People of Red Mountain carried their fight against the mine to the courts. As we heard in Episode 1, the group sued the Bureau of Land Management in 2021 for inadequate tribal consultation in the mine permitting process.

They joined several environmental organizations as plaintiffs on the suit, along with Edward Bartell, a cattle rancher in Susan's community, who we met in Episode 2. After two years of appeals and emergency motions, the final lawsuit against the mine was struck down in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in June 2023.

The decision was a blow, but Gary and others continue to speak out against Lithium Nevada.

Gary: We knew what was out there. BLM knew what was out there. But they're still allowing companies to come in and all the rules are bent to accommodate that corporation.

We're getting to a point now where we're seeing the Black Hills, we're seeing Oak Flat, and we're seeing others in South America become victims to these sacrifice zones.

Jessica: In the wake of the lawsuit's outcome, Gary has been grappling with how to sustain his people's relationship with their homelands, which stretches back far longer than that of the nearby agricultural communities. For the past few years, he has been leading prayer rides, setting out on horseback with others in his community to traverse the caldera, remember ancestral connections to the land there, and pray for healing. He tells us about a recent ride.

Gary: When we did that prayer horse ride, we ended up there in Thacker Pass at Sentinel Rock. And then it was my turn to speak. And then part of it was not knowing what to say. And then part of it was just wanting people to see what was going on there. We didn't know what was going to happen.

Jessica: On their way into the caldera on horseback, they spotted a white security truck.

Gary: “Oh yeah, Gary, there's a, there's a truck up there. What should we do? What should we do?” I said, “Just pray, stay on it. Let's just keep walking hard. I guarantee, when we get there, they'll be tired of waiting.” Sure enough, we got there and nobody was there.

Taking the lead on something like that, you don't know what to say and there might not be anything to say. But I asked everybody to continue to pray for that change of heart. We need to pray that these people, these human beings have that change of heart, that courage to step up and step out of the norm and say, this isn't right.

Jessica: While People of Red Mountain are working to sustain cultural connections to the land, the Thacker Pass Working Group is focused on securing benefits from the mine for their Orovada community. One of the first agreements that the Working Group reached with Lithium Nevada involved the construction of a new K-8 school. In their promotional materials, Lithium Nevada describes the school as a gift to the community, one that was driven by community input and needs. But the reality is more complicated.

Susan: The management team from Lithium Americas, the very first time that they drove through Orovada on the way to go up to Thacker Pass to view their area up there, that they drove by this little school just right along the highway and they said to themselves immediately, “Oh, we're going to have to move that school.”

They knew it was gonna be an issue. They just had to sell the community on moving it.

Jessica: Before the mine was approved, Lithium Nevada worked with the school district to propose a new school.  At the time, the community hadn't yet formed the Thacker Pass Working Group to meet with the mine about its public commitments.

Susan: The location that they wanted to put it in was really far away from where it's at now. It was completely rejected by the community because nobody asked for this.

Jessica: Lithium Nevada dropped the subject until the mine was approved in 2021. At that point, the Thacker Pass Working Group had formed and the community began discussing the hazardous industrial materials that would be transported right by the school.

Susan: At first, it was a hard sell for a lot of the community, just because it felt like a bit of a consolation prize or a buyout. Like, if we played ball with this school, we wouldn't have any reason to complain about anything.

But eventually, we came to understand that it was an opportunity for our kids here and future generations — something that the school district was never going to be able to provide financially.

And so we as the working group, we went ahead with exploring locations for it, exploring plans for it. We sent out a lot of flyers and surveys asking for input from people and there's still a lot of people that they're not too worried about it one way or another and there are still quite a few people that are very, very against it.

There's a lot of generations here that have gone to that school. My husband went to that school, our kids go to that school. Even though we're getting a brand new state-of-the-art school to replace it, there's a sense of mourning about losing that.

Jessica: Susan took us to see the current schoolhouse next to State Route 293. It's composed of two small, single story brick buildings with a playground in the back. It houses some 40 students and 2-3 teachers.

Susan: That whole little square down at the end is the entirety of the kindergarten through 2nd grade classroom. This is the lunch room right here. And the next building over there is 6th, 7th, and 8th grade.

My son's class has six students in his grade. My daughter will be starting kindergarten next year, and it will be her and two other kindergarteners. And that's about average. 

Jessica: As we were standing outside the school, a construction vehicle drove by on the narrow and well-worn two-lane highway.

Susan: I've seen three of them now. These are all Lithium Americas trucks.

Right there where that truck was is the main transportation route. The biggest concern was all the chemicals that are going to be coming out here. Gasoline, diesel, molten sulfur, soda ash.

Jessica: We left the school and drove down a gravel access road to see the location of the new school.

Susan: The BLM granted the Humboldt County School District the piece of land to put the school on here, but it'll be this corner of this property here in between all of the fields up there, across from those hay barns. So yeah, we're getting the kids quite far away from all of the other traffic.

Jessica: As of June 2024, construction of the new school had not yet begun. Susan expressed concern that the community's precarity has been exploited and that Lithium Nevada might use the new school as leverage for future deals.

Susan: We do need upgrades to our school. They don't have any kind of consolidated heating and air conditioning system. They don't have any kind of kitchen in the school, so there's no hot breakfast or lunch options. We have been pushing the school district for upgrades for a long time, but frankly the school district just doesn't have that kind of money. So, we took the opportunity when Lithium Americas offered it, but it can't be seen as us giving permission for them to come do the mining because they were going to come do it whether we went along with the school or not.

Jessica: As construction of the Thacker Pass Mine clears out sagebrush habitat in the southern end of the caldera, Gary and the People of Red Mountain are looking to protect what they still can of the ecology and culture. To that end, they've joined a campaign to establish Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument, which would cover 1.1 million acres of land to the north and east of the caldera. According to the campaign's website, the National Monument would prevent further industrial development, protect native wildlife habitat, promote better land management with cattle grazing, and safeguard cultural resources for the Burns Paiute tribe.

Gary: I introduced that National Monument proposal to my tribe. The activities that go with it, our tribal members might be able to help clean up, help maintain that monument, whether that be having somebody out there take care of it, or if collectively our tribes want to do annual campings or trips out there, that'll be something that we can do. That area will be reserved for our tribes.

Jessica: Gary sees the potential for bringing Indigenous peoples back into the conversation about land use through the establishment of the National Monument.

Gary: I was talking about the Snake War, the Bannock War, the narrative, the timelines that really affected our people. That monument might be able to have an acknowledgement on there. Our people were involved in a lot of things here on the land before settling and mining happened.

You know, when you talk about wins and losses, that could be a potential win for us, if we could get that acknowledgement. 

Jessica: This kind of recognition is important for Gary when he thinks about how to steward the cultural practices and identities of the next generation.

Gary: Back in the day it was all told our Paiute people were savages or Shoshone people were the same things, but we knew how to sustain ourselves on the land and for free. There's a big emptiness in our communities that's been there, and it's called oppression. So what can we do to create good for our people, for our next generations? Cause I got kids of my own that are watching me.

A big part of it is showing the youth. Do things like the horse ride in our gatherings and in trying to do that outreach in a positive way. That it is okay to be an Indian. It's righteous to stand up for your people and your land and to want that clean water for your next generations.

Jessica: The future is weighing heavily on Susan as well. As plans for the mine unfold, she has become concerned about how the influx of construction workers will affect Orovada, and alarmed by the company's ability to expand their plans.

Susan: The biggest difference with the lithium mining is needing to have that processing plant on site. So other mines that have started in this area of the state have not needed nearly the amount of people and money.

People can't understand why this is a $3 billion project, because it's essentially an enormous chemical facility compared to other mines. And we've not seen the same amount of raw chemical materials needed for any of these other mines.

Jessica: When we visited in June 2024, Susan shared the most recent workforce projections at the time from Lithium Nevada, pulling a printed, color-coded graph from her bag. The graph, a neat bell curve, shows estimates of temporary and permanent workers. The curve peaks in 2026 when the company estimates that approximately 2,250 construction workers will be working on site daily. Susan is alarmed about that magnitude of mine workers in the small town of Orovada.

Susan: We have 250 residents total. That’s so many people. That’s so much traffic. That’s support vehicles; that’s manager vehicles; that’s tool vehicles. These are just the people. These are not the delivery loads, the materials. I have no idea what this is going to look like.

Jessica: These temporary workers will be housed in a man camp on the outskirts of Winnemucca, approximately one hour away, and will be bused to the site. Susan stressed the huge infrastructural demands that will be placed not only on Orovada and Winnemucca, but the entire region.

Susan: Even their permanent workforce, which they expect to be between 350-500 people, there are not that many units available for sale or rent in the Winnemucca and surrounding areas. So all of this coming in is a growing pain for the community, for the county, for the city. We have to shoulder that growth on the front end with the promise of tax revenue to make up for it, new jobs to make up for it.

We need more infrastructure. We need more power. We need more water. We need more sewer systems. This doesn't happen overnight.

Jessica: Susan pointed out that other lithium projects in the caldera would require the same labor investments and would in turn redouble these infrastructure challenges. In particular, she mentioned a major upcoming lithium mine proposed by the Australian multinational corporation, Jindalee Lithium.

Susan: A project like the Jindalee project is going to be the same kind of lithium mining. We can't keep seeing something like this happen over and over and over again. There's going to be a breaking point.

We're going to do our best to try to hold it together. It's a whole new ballgame. This area has not seen anything like it before. I'd say most of the West hasn't seen anything like it before. And the thought that it could keep going across the entire caldera is terrifying to a lot of people.

Jessica: The Jindalee site, as well as other new lithium claims named Aurora and FMS, are located on the northern side of the caldera, just beyond the boundary of the proposed Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument. In fact, the monument would stop right at the edge of the caldera. It wouldn't cover the Jindalee, Aurora, or FMS claims.

We learned from Gary and others involved in the campaign for the monument that there are both political and practical reasons for excluding the caldera. Politically speaking, many of the state and federal legislators whose support is critical to getting the monument designated are strongly in favor of lithium mining.

Practically speaking, existing mining claims would not be affected by the National Monument status. Plus, the caldera doesn't qualify as a federal wilderness area because of both legacy mines and existing BLM roads. Nevertheless, Gary appreciates how the movement to protect his homelands from lithium mining has brought his community together and raised their collective consciousness.

Gary: I hope that we can see that national monument become a thing. And I want to see my community here all be wearing their Protect Owyhee Canyonlands T-shirts and want to see Life over Lithium out here and see that we support that.

It feels good to see our communities wanting to come back together. The people woke up. They understood finally: “All right, this is real.”

Let's talk about the dreams instead of the nightmares.

Jessica: For her part, Susan hoped at one point that the Thacker Pass Working Group could set an example for other communities to follow if they're in a position of negotiating with a mining company and the government to advocate for their needs and values.

This was her perspective in summer 2024.

Susan: I think my biggest hope in this entire process that we have embarked on with the mine is that we are creating a new path that can potentially be an inspiration to other small communities. That there is something between litigation and protesting and the other side of that as just bare, raw, heartbreaking acceptance.

Jessica: Half a year later, her outlook was more sober. We caught up with her in February 2025, shortly after Lithium Americas released plans to drastically expand the footprint and lifespan of the mine. The new plans increased the number of sulfuric acid plants from two to five, added mining pits and operations on the south side of the highway that cuts through Thacker Pass which were previously limited to the north side, and extended the mine’s operational lifespan from 41 to 85 years, or until the year 2112.

Susan: I'm very disheartened to see the expanded plans cut off access to the area as we know it. I had been thinking that we could work with them as a community to make this work in a way where the mine would be able to operate, our community would be more or less intact, and we could do this thing together. Getting these new plans really sets us back as a community as far as being able to trust Lithium Americas.

A lot of people are of the mindset that we can't do anything here. We can't fix this. So we might as well give up and stop trying. And I felt that way when I saw these plans. I had a tough afternoon when I started to read through them and I just felt so overwhelmed and just betrayed by the company.

Jessica: Despite the ups and downs, Susan remains committed to advocating for her community however she can.

Susan: So, I sat down and I thought, “Well, what can we do?”

I can't see that we have much to work on as far as permitting or, or hoping that the mine stays smaller but we still have some advocating to do for our community to try to make sure that we're minimizing the impacts of this, because I can't really see that any other agency is at all interested in doing that.

So it's really up to us. And if we don't show up and we don't take a seat at the table, then nobody else will for us. And that's really all we can do at this point, but I'm not willing to give up. We're, we're still trying.

Jessica: For Gary, lithium mining is incompatible with how his people relate to each other and the land. He and the People of Red Mountain coined the phrase “life over lithium,” which they've put up on bright yellow billboards along Route 95.

Gary: I'm the guy that says “life over lithium.” And I'm gonna say this. What's going on today in the green energy transition, the corporations, the jobs, the money. It's all missing spirit. It's all missing the human spirit. It's operating without that. And we need that. It's essential to us.

So, with this green energy transition, talking about lithium, copper, it's actually hurting, it's undoing a lot of that spiritual what we call medicine.

Jessica: This viewpoint challenges dominant narratives of the energy transition, which envision electric vehicles and large-scale solar and wind energy installations as the primary pathways to decarbonization.

Those narratives advocate for green technology to support a particular version of human life on this planet without calling for social and economic transformation. Instead, Gary and the People of Red Mountain stake out a narrative of ecological and cultural life, life that is full of spirit and includes nonhumans as being necessary not only for the survival of their people, but also for any climate solution.

Gary: We have to be balanced with Mother Earth and we have to respect that.

She's given us our nutrients because we're her babies. She's given us everything that we need to sustain ourselves with the water and the trees and the shade and everything. And so to mine everything away, to believe that this is something that's going to fix the climate, I don't want to say you're foolish, but don't be that. Don't think that way. Be human again.

Jessica: Both Susan and Gary see their long term struggle against Lithium Nevada as setting the stage for future contestations over lithium mining far beyond Nevada. What's happening in this moment in the McDermitt Caldera has major implications for rural and Indigenous communities, national energy policy, and the environments of the Great Basin.

In the first season of Mining for the Climate, we observed that the U.S. is at a crossroads for the transition away from fossil fuels. We asked what other paths are available that move away from the paradigm of resource extraction. 

Echoing other voices in both seasons of Mining for the Climate, Gary and Susan speak to the experience of communities grappling with the immense pressure to mine places like the caldera, and with what that means for all of us when it comes to climate solutions.

Kate: If you're resisting Thacker Pass, there are a lot of people who are like, the climate comes first, we have to do this. This is our global prerogative. And then you have other people who are saying, you're missing the point here. We're not going to solve this by mining in this place and you are destroying the people, the environment, and the connections between.

Katie: You can imagine, here you are living in McDermitt and all of a sudden, holy hell breaks loose. Driving along Highway 95, you look to the west. They can't go to Winnemucca without seeing that huge mine scar. And that just has to be wearing down on people, demoralizing, and just anger too. But thankfully people are still resisting.

Edward: This is a fast tracked project and the governor is gung ho in favor of it. The previous governor was gung ho in favor of it. And the presidential administration, both the prior and current.

So, when you have that much political push behind things, people out here just get run over when you voice concerns. Dropping water table and such, they just turn it over to the mining company and then blindly repeat whatever the mining company tells them.

Simon: Everybody's looking around for lithium right now and the question is, do we need all of this lithium? Are lithium ion batteries going to be the future or are we going to do something else?

Jessica: As long-time activists point out, mining is still mining. And those who have historically borne its burdens are bearing them once again.

Autumn: So many people don't even recognize Native people. If people could recognize, like, “Oh, Native people have been here protecting their homelands for time immemorial, maybe we should honor them, maybe we should recognize them, that they have a connection to this place,” like we wouldn't be having to deal with all of these corporations coming in. Like it wouldn't even get to the point of going to court. “Oh no, that's Native land. Let's not approve that project.”

John: So the industry, in my view, their strategy has been to be low profile. They don't want to show too many pictures that don't look good.

We're in a different era now, where they're now the champions of climate. Lithium Nevada, they said that so many times in court, “The earth's gonna burn up in a cinder if you do not permit this mine.” So they just really poured it on heavy. They're being a lot more high profile. But in this way of, “We're now the good guys.”

Jessica: Given the social, cultural, and ecological damage that lithium mining brings, many are acknowledging that more mining is not a solution. In response, they are pointing to an array of options to move climate policy away from mining-intensive technologies and toward solutions that address more than carbon emissions.

Ian: We’re being sold single occupancy electric vehicles as the solution And I think it's working really well. That's a very easy narrative for the broader U.S. public is, “Everybody gets a sexy electric truck. You stop feeling guilt. Climate change is done.”

Kassandra: The climate crisis is not just about carbon. It's about water stresses. It's about biodiversity loss. It's about land use change. It's about how we relate to our planet, right?

I think there are other solutions to combating the climate crisis that are not so heavily reliant on lithium. Walkable cities, public transit, feeling like I can bike to work without getting killed by a car. I don't think single-use occupancy vehicles are the silver bullet because we're simply replacing extraction for extraction and calling it a solution.

Day: If we're in a crisis, then we need to look at that and accept that, “Hey, we need to do something different here. We're dying. Our race is dying. Our earth is dying. We only get one shot at this.” You know, pretty simple, I think.

Nate: Mining for the Climate is a co-creation of Nate Otjen. Jessica Ng, and Juan Manuel Rubio, and it's a production of Blue Lab at Princeton University.  

This episode of Mining for the Climate was written and edited by Jessica Ng and Nate Otjen, and produced by Jessica Ng.

Our research and production team includes: Christopher Bao, Jose Santacruz, Jessica Ng, and Nate Otjen.

Sound design is by Gianna Imparato. Music for this episode was by Pixabay. Find it at pixabay.com.

Mining for the Climate was made possible by funding from Blue Lab, the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Humanities Council, and the Office of the Dean for Research at Princeton University. Ramapo College generously provided faculty research funding.

We would like to express our gratitude to the following people for their generosity and kindness: John Hadder, Ian Bigley, Susan Frey, Day Hinkey, Myron Smart, Justina Paradise, [00:31:00] Gary McKinney, Katie Fite, Dorece Sam, Edward Bartell, Kassandra Lisenbee, Terry Crawforth, Autumn Harry, Chanda Callao, Daniel Rothberg, Ryan Houston, Paul White, Kate Berry, Eric Nystrom, Simon Jolette, Ka’ila Ferrell Smith, Josh Dini, Carolina Muñoz-Saez, Ehsan Vahidi, Paul Ruprecht, Rick Eichstaedt, Chrissy Klenky, Nick Erruty, Patrick Donnelly, Philip Ruprecht, Will Folk, Glenn Miller, Mike Visher, Rich Stone, and Dave Mendiola.

At Blue Lab, we especially thank last season's Mining for the Climate team: Juan Rubio, Grace Wang, Max Widmann, and Alex Norbrook, along with the lab’s leadership, Allison Carruth and Barron Bixler and fellow members Jamie Collins, Mario Soriano, and Asela Perez Ortiz.

And at the High Meadows Environmental Institute, we thank Emily Ahmetaj, [00:32:00] Stacey Christian, Kathy Hackett, Nathan Jesse, Ryan Juskus, Zack Kaado, Heidi Mihelich, and Laura Matecha.