Mother Pelican
A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability

Vol. 20, No. 1, January 2024 Luis T. Gutiérrez, Editor

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Salton Sea Next on Lithium Chopping Block Megan K. Seibert This article was originally published by The REAL Green New Deal, 7 December 2023 REPUBLISHED WITH PERMISSION Click on the image to enlarge. A new report released by DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that California’s largest, and dying, lake “is believed to have the highest concentration of lithium contained in geothermal brines in the world.” The bruised and battered Salton Sea is already under serious pressure from the faux renewables craze. Berkshire Hathaway operates 10 geothermal plants there. It’s recently commissioned a test facility to extract lithium from the geothermal brine, which two other companies are also working towards. And “companies with billionaire backing are buying in, with the likes of Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and others betting big on the idea.” The report says that the belly of the sea holds: A proven lithium stock of 4.1 million metric tons and a probable stock of 18 million. (For reference, the McDermitt Caldera is estimated to hold 20-40). “3,400 kilotons of lithium, enough to support over 375 million batteries for electric vehicles—more than the total number of vehicles currently on U.S. roads.” The California Energy Commission even has a “Blue-Ribbon Commission on Lithium Extraction in California,” also known as the Lithium Valley Commission, tasked with investigating lithium extraction in the state and mechanisms to fast-track it. Of course, bolstering all this are things from the Biden Administration like: Executive Order 14057, Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs Through Federal Sustainability, to “achieve a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.” Executive Order 14017 on America’s Supply Chains, calling for “resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains to ensure our economic prosperity and national security,” which is threatened by “pandemics and other biological threats, cyber-attacks, climate shocks and extreme weather events, terrorist attacks, geopolitical and economic competition.” Presidential Determination No. 2022-11, which invoked the Defense Production Act in relation to mineral extraction, saying “a robust, resilient, sustainable, and environmentally responsible domestic industrial base to meet the requirements of the clean energy economy, such as the production of large-capacity batteries, is essential to our national security and the development and preservation of domestic critical infrastructure.” Its joint announcement with “companies” (take that in!) for major investments to “expand domestic critical minerals supply chain, breaking dependence on China and boosting sustainable practices.” The American Battery Materials Initiative and $2.8 billion fund to “expand domestic manufacturing of batteries for electric vehicles and the electrical grid and for materials and components currently imported from other countries.” Its $20 billion competition to capitalize a clean energy financing network. Its $30 million of “clean energy” funding to 28 state, local and tribal governments. As indigenous and ancient people, and the intelligence beyond the veil that’s guided them, know, precious metals and minerals like lithium are conscious and intelligent – like Gaia herself and the water, stone, crystals, flora, and fauna that are part of her – which means we can interact and co-create with them in sophisticated ways that are beneficial for all. This is the frontier of energy and a new way of being on Earth. Not desecrating the land and ripping out its innards like brutes drunk on the spoils of their pillaging. Sure, some people caught up in this mess are well-intentioned but just haven’t seen past the greenwashing. There are those who know, deep down, that something might be wrong with the narrative but won’t really let themselves go there. And then there are those who know full well what they’re doing. Worse still, there’s barely a peep about all this from either progressive politicians or alt-progressive pundits. Max Blumenthal did a piece defending Planet of the Humans. Jimmy Dore recently featured Cory Morningstar’s work exposing the Greta sham. But that’s about all, that I’m aware of – either silence or outright support for the GND from the very people who should see right through it and call it out. The mineral wars, that have been largely waged in the Global South, have now arrived in North America in earnest. The mines at Thacker Pass, Ryholite Ridge, and Clayton Valley in Nevada; at McDermitt in Oregon; at Smackover in Arkansas; the poor Salton Sea that’s been ravaged so; and the lithium and battery production facilities in Tennessee, might be just the tip of iceberg unless more people wake up to the lie of Green New Deal and say no to this destructive madness (which our paper here outlines and which this lays out an alternative to). ABOUT THE AUTHOR Megan K. Seibert is Executive Director of The REAL Green New Deal Project. She is a systems thinker who started REALgnd in response to the overwhelmingly short-sighted rhetoric about energy and sustainability, filling a need for sober analysis and bold truth-telling. She has an M.S. in Systems Science/Environmental Management from Portland State University and an international studies B.S. with core STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) from the U.S. Air Force Academy. |Back to Title| LINK TO THE CURRENT ISSUE          LINK TO THE HOME PAGE

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