How the rise of green tech is feeding another environmental crisis

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By Ione Wells, BBC. 

Excerpt: Raquel Celina Rodriguez watches her step as she walks across the Vega de Tilopozo in Chile's Atacama salt flats. It's a wetland, known for its groundwater springs, but the plain is now dry and cracked with holes she explains were once pools. "Before, the Vega was all green," she says. "You couldn't see the animals through the grass. Now everything is dry." She gestures to some grazing llamas. For generations, her family raised sheep here. As the climate changed, and rain stopped falling, less grass made that much harder. But it worsened when "they" started taking the water, she explains. "They" are lithium companies. Beneath the salt flats of the Atacama Desert lie the world's largest reserves of lithium, a soft, silvery-white metal that is an essential component of the batteries that power electric cars, laptops and solar energy storage. As the world transitions to more renewable energy sources, the demand for it has soared. In 2021, about 95,000 tonnes of lithium was consumed globally - by 2024 it had more than doubled to 205,000 tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). By 2040 it's predicted to rise to more than 900,000 tonnes. Most of the increase will be driven by demand for electric car batteries, the IEA says. Locals say environmental costs to them have risen too.... 

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