IMHO, the lack of technical education among „melon-ist“ (activists, having green surface, with ping pulp with and brown seeds inside) is the core problem. All of them would love to kill the “big oil” and ICE by fast adoption of EV on environmental protection ground. Now they are quite disappointed from the surprising fact, that Lithium does not grow in a forest, but it is necessary to mine it. The next “shock” for them is going to be, that the adoption of EVs will not really kill the “big oil” (because even EVs do need plastic and tyres) and the final “shock” will come in about 10 years from now, when they find out about the pile of waste material from used EVs and all that dust from tyres (conventional EV is much heavier than ICE), but that may be eliminated by invention of the “holy grail” of EVs – the invention of the Solid State Battery.

I guess, the EVs look quite “green”, when all  raw material is mined/processed in China and melonist can only see the “environmental friendly” Freemont factory and EVs on the streets, with no pipe which would produce that CO2, which is no doubt the “killer of all innocent children” and nobody has to deal with the waste left after EVs.

NY Times is an ultra leftist newspaper, spreading more of a propaganda and less of solid facts. Something like the Russian PRAVDA of those “old good times”. I just struggle to understand, why is so difficult to accept, that Thacker Pass is in the middle of nowhere. Where else can be the impact of the mining operation limited to relatively “few civilians”? Pumping brine from an underground would cause, IMHO, more environmental issues than the open pit operation, which will be closed in about 50 years or so.