In January 2021, activists set up a camp in the Nevada desert to protest a proposed lithium mine. I interviewed Kevin Emmerich of Basin & Range Watch to get the facts on the ecological effects of lithium extraction.
Basin & Range Watch is a desert defense group based in southern Nevada. They track industrial energy developments on public lands in the US southwest, and I consider them to be the premier online resource for learning about and keeping up-to-date with these projects, which include solar and wind.
Basin and Range Watch is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working to conserve the deserts of Nevada and California and to educate the public about the diversity of life, cultures, and history of the desert, as well as sustainable local renewable energy alternatives. They seek to protect desert wildlands and species, groundwater resources, dark night skies, culturally important landscapes, local ways of life, and more.
The deserts of the American Southwest have come under a new assault in the last decade. The few, fragmented areas of these austere, rugged, yet delicate landscapes that had managed to survive relatively intact from mining, ranching, military use (including nuclear tests), urban encroachment and motorized recreation, are now being targeted for the development of large-scale “green” energy projects, many of them on public lands.
After Obama’s election in 2008, a raft of federal incentives including grants, loan guarantees and tax breaks were offered for renewable energy with the ostensible purpose of reducing the nation’s carbon footprint. This was greeted by cheers from many environmentalists, but as has been characteristic of Obama’s administration, the hope turned out to be hype. Big corporations have been the beneficiaries and the environment is still the big loser.
Basin & Range Watch is a non-profit that operates out of Beatty, Nevada, in the Mojave Desert. Their mission is to “conserve the deserts of Nevada and California and to educate the public about the diversity of life, culture, and history of the ecosystems and wild lands” there. Central to this mission is opposing the many large-scale solar and wind projects that have been proposed in the area, a number of which have been built, all with deleterious consequences. In these efforts, Basin & Range Watch has sometimes found themselves at odds not just with big corporations and big government but also with big environmental organizations, because some of the latter have gotten cozy with the corporations and the state.
