In this article, Max Wilbert talks about his experience in fighting tar sand mining in Washington and Utah, and how this is related to the current campaign against lithium mining in Nevada. “I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.”
It’s often said that solar panels, wind turbines, and the lithium-ion batteries that store their energy and power electric vehicles will save the planet.
What most people don’t know is that producing lithium has direct links to the Alberta Tar Sands (also known as the Athabasca tar sands), the largest and most destructive industrial project on the planet.
This is a personal issue for me. I have fought the tar sands for over a decade. Starting in 2010, I began campaigning for the city of Bellingham, Washington to forbid a spur of the Trans Mountain pipeline which carries “dilbit” (diluted bitumen, AKA unrefined tar sands to which gas has been added so it’ll flow easily through a pipeline) under the city.
After months of campaigning, Bellingham became the first city in the nation to unanimously pass a resolution declaring tar sands fuel to be harmful. But despite overwhelming public opposition, the city’s attorneys said they couldn’t prevent the pipeline from operating using the law. What that says about the state of democracy is worth a whole different article. And perhaps a revolution. But I digress.
After my years in Bellingham, I lived in Salt Lake City, where I took part in the campaign to protect the Tavaputs Plateau in northeastern Utah from tar sands strip mining. As part of that work, I took part in public meetings, family camp-outs on the site, disruptive protests, and several direct actions against the U.S. Oil Sands Corporation.
For the last three months, I’ve been in Nevada, on Northern Paiute territory, holding down a protest camp established on the proposed site of an open-pit lithium mine. I’m an equal opportunity land defender. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for tar sands. I think it’s wrong to blow up a mountain for lithium, too. I guess I’m just stubborn like that.
But as I’ve implied, these projects are directly related. It turns out, the proposed mine at Thacker Pass would likely rely directly on materials sourced from the Alberta tar sands as the key chemical ingredient in their production process.
According to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, the proposed Thacker Pass mine would produce 5,800 tons of sulfuric acid per day for use in refining lithium. That would require importing 1,896 tons of sulfur per day. That’s nearly 700,000 tons per year, roughly equivalent to the mass of two Empire State Buildings annually. This would be brought in to Thacker Pass on dozens of (diesel-fueled) semi-trucks each carrying 3,800 gallons of molten sulfur.
Most sulfur comes from oil and gas refineries, where it’s a byproduct of producing low-sulfur fuels to meet air-quality regulations. And here’s the punchline: according the U.S. Geological Survey, tar sands contain 11 times as much sulfur as conventional heavy crude oil. There are literal “mountains” of sulfur piling up in Alberta, and at other refineries which process tar sands fuel.
That includes the refineries in Anacortes, Washington, which refines the “dilbit” from the pipelines running underneath Bellingham, my old home. These two refineries are major sources of sulfur for the entire western United States, shipping out millions of tons annually.
According to Lithium Americas Corp. Vice President of Global Engineering, the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass would purchase sulfur on the bulk commodity market, and it would be delivered by rail to Winnemucca (60 miles south), then brought by truck to Thacker Pass. That bulk commodity market sources nearly 100% of its elemental sulfur from oil and gas refineries.
And so we come full circle: the lithium destined for lithium-ion batteries that will be extracted from Thacker Pass, will almost certainly be directly connected to the total destruction of Alberta’s boreal forest, the poisoning of the water across thousands of square miles, the epidemic of cancers and rare diseases in that region, the wave of missing and murdered indigenous women in Alberta, and all the other harms that come from the tar sands. And, lest we forget, the tar sands are a major contributor to global warming. Canadian greenhouse gas emissions have skyrocketed over recent decades, as tar sands oil production has expanded.
Revenue from sales of sulfur is not unimportant to the economics of tar sands oil extraction. One report from 2018 found that as much as half a million barrels per day of tar sands product would be economical to extract if legal levels of sulfur allowed in bunker fuel were lowered. Another report found that “developing a plan for storing, selling or disposing of the sulphur will help to ensure the profitability of oil sands operations.”
All this points to a relatively simple conclusion: extraction of lithium at Thacker Pass would directly support the economics of extracting additional sulfur-rich crude oil and bitumen at the tar sands, further incentivizing the destruction of the planet.
Why do we defend the land here at Thacker Pass? There are so many reasons. It is important habitat. It is sacred ancestral land for our Northern Paiute friends from the nearby Fort McDermitt tribe. It is beautiful. But we also stand to protect this place because we stand for the truth. Lithium mining, and by extension, much of the so-called “green economy” that is being developed is not separate from fossil fuels. It is firmly dependent on fossil fuels.
Besides the sulfur, this project would burn tens of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel per day — operating heavy equipment made of steel that was produced with metallurgical coke, a type of coal. That same steel makes up the frame of the electric cars, too. The roads into the mine site would likely be made of asphalt concrete. You know what another name for asphalt is? Bitumen. AKA tar sands.
The idea of a “green” electric car is a fantasy. The sooner we face that reality, the sooner we can put a stop to false greenwashing projects like the Lithium Americas/Lithium Nevada Thacker Pass mine. The sooner we face reality, the sooner we can recognize that to shut down the tar sands, we actually have to shut down the tar sands, not just blow up other mountains elsewhere and hope that leads to the end of the tar sands.
Do not fool yourself. This is not some great green transition. It is more of the same. More destroyed land, more poisoned water, more decimated wildlife.
It’s beautiful here at Thacker Pass. Yesterday morning, I woke before 5am to visit the Greater sage-grouse “lek” — mating ground — on top of the mountain directly above the proposed mine. I watched the male grouse strut and dance, and thought about the new USGS report showing that grouse populations have declined by 80% since 1965, and nearly 40% since 2002. That comes on top of previous population collapses. The population was 16 million a century ago. Now, it’s closer to 200,000. That’s a 99% decline. This region, the northwestern Great Basin, has been particularly hard hit.
It is possible for humans to live sustainably. Our ancestors managed it for hundreds of thousands of years. Is it possible to live sustainably, and drive cars? No, I don’t believe it is. You may not like it, but there’s a thing about the natural laws of the universe: they don’t give a damn if you like them or not. Gravity exists. Ecological constraints exist. If you ignore them, you will pay the price.
We cannot afford to ignore the truth, and because of this, we must stop the Thacker Pass mine — and the tar sands. We need your help. If you can contribute to this campaign, or to the broader transformation of society that is needed, reach out to us at https://ProtectThackerPass.org. Construction might begin very soon. If that happens, Thacker Pass will die. The water will be poisoned. And the truth will be crushed along with the sagebrush, under the hard metal treads of the bulldozers. Stand with us.
Protect Thacker Pass with activists Max Wilbert, Will Falk and Rebecca Wildbear
Activists aiming to stop Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass open-pit lithium mine – what would be the United States’ largest lithium mine, supplying up to 25% of the world’s lithium – launched a permanent protest encampment hours after the Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to the mine on January 15.
The Green Flame brings you the voices of land protectors Will Falk and Max Wilbert who mean to stay for as long as it takes to protect this old-growth sagebrush mountainside despite winter conditions at Thacker Pass. Rebecca Wildbear, river and soul guide, lover of the wild, joins us in honoring and calling for defense of the Great Basin, Thacker Pass and the whole of wild creation. Many thanks to Green Flame sound editor Iona and to the many non-human voices – Golden Eagle, Coyote, and Greater Sage Grouse – speaking to us in this Protect Thacker Pass episode of the Green Flame.
Written by Caroline Williford: a Letter and Poem, from North Carolina to Thacker Pass. Caroline outlines her concerns regarding Lithium Mining. Regardless of whether the minerals are used for fossil fuels or for electric vehicles, as far as the natural world is concerned, any form of industrial mining is as destructive as the other. We strongly believe it is of utmost importance to shift our allegiance from these destructive industries to the natural world.
Featured image: Pictured here is the Foote mine, a large open-pit lithium mine in spodumene pegmatite, located on the south side of the town of Kings Mountain, North Carolina. The Foote mine project was initiated in 1938. This photograph was taken in 1983. 45 years later. The photograph shows the mine viewed from its western rim looking east toward the Pinnacle of Kings Mountain. For those curious as to what an open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass might look like after its 40 year run, this may give you an idea. Photograph by J. Wright Horton, Jr., U.S. Geological Survey.
On Thursday, February 11, 2021, a court decision overturned the Trump administration action that would have allowed mining, primarily for fossil fuel projects, on 10 million acres of previously protected land in western states. This decision sounds like a triumph, halting potential mining projects and preserving threatened habitat that would otherwise have been destroyed. This ruling sends the message that mining processes that harm the environment are unacceptable.
Unfortunately, this ruling is aimed only at fossil fuels.
What about the mining project at Thacker Pass, in Nevada, approved in the eleventh hour of Trump’s presidency, that still has the green light? The 5,700 acres of also previously protected land, now currently slated for mining, that would be destroyed for the extraction of lithium?
This lithium would be used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and as storage for renewable energy. Because of this, the destruction of Thacker Pass is being described as “green.”
If you start to dig into what it means to construct an open-pit lithium mine on a piece of land, you will learn that there is nothing green about it. The Thacker Pass mine would burn some 11,300 gallons of diesel fuel per day, the carbon emissions from the site would ultimately exceed 150,000 tons per year, and producing one ton of lithium would require strip mining and processing of up to 500 tons of earth. Tons of sulfuric acid would be produced every day, in addition to other harsh chemicals that could leach into the groundwater. The project would require over 1.7 billion gallons of water annually from a local aquifer which is already over-allocated. The effect on native wildlife and vegetation would be catastrophic, including species that are rare and already en route to extinction.
This is the native, ancestral, sacred land of Paiute and Shoshone people.
Such a project may provide job opportunities for some locals, but for all locals it would impact air and water quality for future generations. This mining project would continue for four decades. The project that begins at 5,700 acres could expand over time to 17,000 acres, which could triple all numbers mentioned here. Furthermore, the Thacker Pass lithium mine is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. On February 24, 2021, an executive order was put into place by the current administration that could potentially unleash a whole new era of lithium mining in the US.
My question is, why is it acceptable to mine for this purpose, for lithium, if the well-being of the earth is our actual concern? It is mining all the same. This is not actual change. It is more of the same. More destruction, more extraction and decimation, and for what purpose? Continuing a way of life that perpetuates a depletion of the earth’s resources and a number of species that also make this planet their home? Must we destroy the earth in order to save it? Where is the common sense in this equation? We are doing ourselves in. We are not thinking outside of the box. We are on one hand condemning mining efforts for fossil fuels due to the negative impact on the environment, and on the other hand not only advocating mining for lithium, but championing it, pushing it forward to the front of the room under the name of clean and green, all the while hiding its own equally catastrophic impacts on the environment in the periphery.
It’s capitalism and consumerism bullying ahead with an agenda that prioritizes profit over the critical thinking and sound decision making that could actually set us on a path to take care of the earth, rather than destroy it, as we attempt to save it.
Simply said: it’s greenwashing.
As someone who has been a part of the environmental movement for the majority of my life, I hate having to form that word upon my tongue, and to acknowledge such a divide among those of us who would otherwise be unified in a purpose to preserve the well-being of the earth. And yet, that word is upon my tongue, and it’s bitter. Yes, I can agree to forward-thinking actions to protect our environment, but not to those that require further destruction. We are already so far behind. We are already in the midst of a literal sixth mass extinction event on the planet, and this time it is driven by us, human beings. As one of those human beings, I want to do things differently this time.
I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of lesser evils. I am not going to believe the claim that an action is green or clean, unless I can dig all the way to the depths of it and find that it fully honors life just as it is at this moment and it requires no further assault in order for us to move forward. I ask that we do better this time. Lithium mining is not the answer. And, I am here making this statement: I do not support lithium mining, anywhere. I do not support lithium mining at Thacker Pass.
I want to protect Thacker Pass.
I have been following the efforts of Protect Thacker Pass from North Carolina over the last month, and the more I’ve learned about the mining project, the more appalled I’ve become. I had no idea what lithium mining entailed a few months ago. I’ve entered into one long conversation after another, sharing what I’m learning with friends, and with each conversation I’ve observed yet another person, like myself, waking as if from a deep slumber, shaking their head, astonished, and asking endless questions. How did we not know about lithium mining? How did we get so disconnected from the goings-on in the world that we no longer see what is actually happening around us, or ask the critical questions of how things are actually made? Such as, what does it take to make a lithium battery? And why do some people care while others do not? I can’t answer these questions for anyone else and so I am looking at myself.
Have I been asleep? Is it too late? How did I get to a place of such complacency and blind trust, that I stopped actively looking at the world around me, really looking? Looking in the way that matters. And, what can I do about it, now? When I can’t find answers any other way, I sit down and write. What follows is my attempt at answering these questions in my relationship to Thacker Pass. What I ultimately discovered is this: now is the time for action, and it’s time to go to Thacker Pass.
***
Now is the Time
It seems to me that there are many ways of looking at the world.
There is the way of looking when we are caught
layers deep
in our stories
of yesterday’s confoundments
of tomorrow’s yearnings
to the extent that we simply cannot see
one inch beyond
where our glazed over eyes might meet the world.
And there is the way of looking
when the rug has suddenly been pulled out ruthlessly, beneath us
and we are searching
eyes keen as eagles
for the thing that has just been lost. How could we not have seen this coming?
Everything is seen painfully anew.
What is now missing like a holy gap,
a tear in the great fabric of the world.
The loss pounds our gut with regret.
And there is the way of looking
that is now
without the stories clouding view. The moment before the thing is lost.
The one that is in fact here, everyday upon waking
if we take up its humble, quiet call.
It requires us to participate.
To shelve the stories.
To get down on our knees and see the world before us.
Really see it.
Every fine tuned rake of the sand, marked
by the talons, hooves, and claws that daily grace this place.
And perhaps the call is not quiet at all.
But a continuous, piercing cry.
The kind of which we as humans may think we cannot hear, may claim
we cannot hear, like other animals.
But we can. If we just lean in. Closer.
Now.
This is the time before.
The imminent hour.
When the stories are rising up,
teeming and swelling and clamoring
to be heard before it’s too late.
This is the time of choice. When we can choose something different than before.
Trading one heartless destructive act for another is not the way.
Destroying in order to save.
Not the way.
The lesser of two evils.
Not the way.
Is this really the only choice we have to make?
No.
We limit ourselves.
Perhaps we are so smothered by the din of
our culture’s mighty noise
that it’s hard to hear. It’s hard to see.
But we owe it to the earth to which we belong
to take off the blinders, to quiet a moment, and listen
to the urgent message being issued forth: please just stop.
Stop mining.
For any reason: coal, oil, lithium.
Not for fossil fuels, not for supposed clean energy.
This is not clean energy.
Drilling into the earth to break, leach and deplete
the elements that make up our very foundation.
Displacing the native inhabitants of a place,
greater sage-grouse already in their ongoing dance with extinction,
pygmy rabbits, golden eagles, pronghorn antelope,
from the burrows in the ground to the nests arching up in the sky.
Poisoning the water as far as 150 miles downstream.
Depleting the water supply of the driest known state in our entire country.
Leaving the land scarred, barren, empty, parched, destroyed.
I want to live this way, and this way only:
Stirred from sleep each waking day
with an ear to the world’s whisperings,
loyal to its call to hear and think critically
outside of the green washings of capitalism and industry
where the solutions are tinged with blood, death and loss.
I want to walk my feet out the door and help trace lines around
that which is mapped for destruction
which we have somehow forgotten is also our very destruction,
our death, our loss.
I don’t ever want to forget that we are one and the same.
We, and this earth beneath our feet.
The only difference between us, the rivers, the mountains,
and the other creatures of this vast place
is the voice with which we speak.
The cadence, the language.
We as humans hold a lot of power, too much, with what we choose to say, and when.
Our voices are crucial.
So I’m going to offer mine up, and say right here:
STOP.
Upon the Proposed Mining of “Thacker Pass, Nevada”. A poem by Sarah Gar, a visitor to the land of the Paiute and Shoshone people and the sagebrush creatures.
It’s quiet here.
And I’m not talking
about experimental silence,
American guru silence,
or any sleek human site
that seeks inner peace
(and other noise)
to drown out the drawing-down
and drying-up of every sacred thing.
I’m talking about silence
of lands beyond witness,
a silence embedded and embedding,
the one nestling in the nighthawk’s cries
and cradling these words.
Tall sagebrush touches it —
4 feet 33 millimeters
of branching space,
where voice and silence
play by listening,
weaving water and light
without worrying who
appears as what
before whom.
It’s as if nothing can be said
to arrive or leave in wild places.
Even our breath cannot be said
to enter this place
where it meets other selves
always here and already inside.
But when Grandmother comes,
wakes the fire with practiced taps,
the flames flare in reminder
of whose Spirits keep this place.
Even in “deserted” places
dry soil knows to gather
soft and firm around water,
forming delicate strata
to nourish roots
and catch the drifting seed.
We, too, know to gather,
asking if we are also this place,
and if so,
how we can return.
To get here
we must track ourselves
by species memory,
a long way back,
to when losing one’s way
first became possible.
We trace back to the end’s beginning,
when the volume had to rise,
to create an endless diversion,
to mask the pesky screams
of women and slaves.
Yes, we tracked ourselves,
even did a blood spatter analysis.
A few facts emerged to tell us:
We are the losing and the lost.
There’s nothing lonelier than empire, and nothing stranger than killing one’s beloved.
These facts cleared the room.
Even history couldn’t erase them.
The clock ticked.
Corporations continued to cut down the ancient ones.
And so we rose, rotating and revolving
pulled forward by the falling-apart feeling
which is love.
This must be love because,
as sung by Paiute and Shoshone,
danced by pronghorn and coyote,
this place would hold forever,
streams passing
through trouts’ gills,
sun glancing off scales
and into eagle’s eyes
as she watches over.
Past and future
would nest together,
quiet as grouse eggs,
speckled and constellating,
in tacit reference to each other.
Birth and death would spiral together,
strong and fragile as pyrg shell,
and we would learn again
to listen and to hold
this language,
the spinning of the silence
that found us first,
soft as jackrabbit,
buried as bones,
strong spines of sage
and mountain song.
As a former English professor from the East Coast, Sarah now focuses on writing and activism in the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry grieves patriarchal and colonial violence, summons reverence for the natural world, and upholds matriarchal cultures which cherish life.
In this article, Kelli Lundin describes her experience at Thacker Pass and the culmination of her analysis that every landscape deserves sovereignty for its own sake.
By Kelli Lundin
I’ve always found my attempts quite taboo in trying to put my experiences into a container—such as words. How can any arrangement of words, especially mine, fully describe feelings, emotions, visions, colors, dreams—or in particular, Life from the perspective of a specific place? My experience at Thacker Pass holds for me the same dilemma. What can be said of such a place to make a difference in the hearts of others? How can I describe with words something so sacred, something so elemental, something so necessary that it merits protection, honor, and reparations from us all?
What comes to mind is this: every place, whether it be Thacker Pass or any other Landscape, deserves sovereignty for its own sake, or rather, IS sovereign. Land, like any other body, is its own, just like mine and yours, the Songbird’s, the Sage Brush, every body of water, every mountain, woodland, valley, and prairie.
“First, and above all, an explanation must do justice to the thing that is to be explained, must not devalue it, interpret it away, belittle it, or garble it, in order to make it easier to understand…”
Words, I feel, (or again, at least mine) never fully justify, explain, or have the ability to assign value to what is Sacred. And like Thomas Berry said,
“There are no unsacred places; there are only Sacred places and desecrated places.”
Thacker Pass is Sacred.
And, I believe what weaves throughout all sacredness, or literally what defines the Sacred, is Relationship. Here in the high landscapes nestled amongst Mountains and Valleys, relationships abound in abundance. These relationships are so intimate—my voice, my thoughts, my very presence feels intrusive. Being in this place, my eyes wide open, I am in awe. My heart relaxes, my mind empties, and I feel at home in a quiet comfort that is rarely afforded to me.
I wander in solitude, and the wild of this place soothes the ache and loneliness I find in the city, the noise and bustle of everyday goings-on. The sound of Ravens, Chukars, Coyotes, Rain, and the explicit emotions of Wind repair and bring back to Life all my senses. The ever-constant numbness that protects me from the underlying and overwhelming grief of all that I know, slowly fades. I feel again, what it is to be alive.
I trail them—Deer, Coyote, the flight of a Sage Grouse, Bobcat, Mouse, even a Mountain Lion and wonder about their lives—what they know, how they feel, the meanings of their songs. I also wonder, “how do the sounds of my song inspire others?”
I have seen the spectrum of desecration swing from dismissiveness, blatant willful ignorance and callousness, all the way to blasting, shredding and annihilating bodies to dust, leaving death forever more in its wake. Lithium Americas wants to obliterate Thacker Pass. It doesn’t matter that they have a reason. It’s not their body. It’s not their Lithium. It belongs to the land. It’s Hers for her own purpose.
Does it take being raped and knowing that experience to empathize with the raping of Land or any body that is being taken from, used, resourced, controlled, exploited, or any other word describing desecration? I don’t know. What I do know is this: rape equals death. Something dies that is never reborn and no amount of grief will ever bring it back.
When will we all see this with our own eyes?
ALL of Life is depending on us to open our eyes and hearts to see the Sacred, in us and all around us. Death is one thing, but the end of birth is entirely something else.
For me, it all comes down to one word. Love (verb): to give Life, protect Life, honor Life, to see all Life as Sacred. For every Body.
Thank you Will Falk and Max Wilbert for continuing to offer justice, through your words and actions, that speak to the truth of how I feel and what I know. I’m so proud of you both. You are true humans being. Your courage is remarkable and a clear demonstration of how we all can expand our awareness in knowing every Body as Sacred.
Kelli Lundin is an environmental activist, land defender and writer.
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