Miners, Bureaucrats Scrap Over Critical Minerals
It is fitting, after a fashion, that this account detailing the struggles of mining and the minerals needed to drive our presumed “green energy transition” gives both the first and last words to a botanist, not a miner. It personifies a complex state of affairs.
The botanist (Jerry Tiehm) and, more specifically, the little plant he found in Nevada’s Rhyolite Ridge — later named Tiehm’s buckwheat — became the root of a major political and economic match because the unique spot where the (later officially endangered) plant was found is in an area rich with lithium. That metal is also widely seen as key to an embryonic energy revolution.
What matters more, asks the author: the plant, or the lithium that is beneath it?
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