Here’s a bit of good news reported by Carly Cassella at ScienceAlert:
An ancient supervolcano in the United States may be hiding the largest deposit of lithium found anywhere in the world.
A new study hypothesizes that the McDermitt Caldera, which sits on the border between Nevada and Oregon, contains more than double the concentration of lithium seen in any other bed of clay globally, around 20 to 40 million metric tons in total.
As should not be surprising there is some controversy:
Many scientists, environmentalists, ranchers, and First Nations people are concerned by the US government’s recent decision to approve the Thacker Pass Lithium mine in the McDermitt Caldera, which sits on land that is sacred to several Indigenous tribes and contains precious wildlife habitats.
The project is owned by a subsidiary of Canadian company Lithium Americas whose largest shareholder is Ganfeng, a Chinese company tied directly to the CCP.
Don’t underestimate our ability to screw this up.
