Friend—The world’s largest lithium deposits might be right here in my own backyard.

The Salton Sea, just a few hours east of Los Angeles, was recently found to have enough lithium stored in its aquifers for 375 million electric car batteries, or close to 40 percent of the global demand.

Mining this lithium is no easy task, as it’s dissolved in a pool of brine 1,500 feet below the earth’s surface, but local officials in the area are salivating at the chance to brand “Lithium Valley” as the next big gold rush.

Lithium batteries are important for the transition to renewable, sustainable energy infrastructure, but we have to be careful with how equitably this newfound resource is treated.

The Imperial Valley is one of the poorest regions in the state—24.9% of its children live in poverty and suffer abnormally high rates of asthma from toxins exposed by the receding Salton Sea lakebed.

The County plans to tax the lithium extraction to fund renewal programs, but the state and federal governments need to keep an eye on the participating companies to make sure their operations benefit the people, and they don’t cut corners for the sake of profit.

Lithium has become an emblematic issue when it comes to global affairs. In 2020, after a coup in Bolivia overthrew socialist president Evo Morales, Elon Musk—whose company Tesla relies on relatively-expensive lithium sourced from Australia—tweeted out, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

Native tribes have protested other lithium mining projects here in the US, and in April Peru’s hugely unpopular right-wing government moved away from the country’s plan to nationalize lithium, inviting corporations and the US military to step in.

The treatment of American companies toward foreign natural resources—ravenous, unscrupulous, and damaging to local and indigenous peoples—is nothing new.

But it needs to change.

As lithium production ramps up here in the United States, we need to protect local interests by enforcing environmental regulations, labor rights and dignity, and making sure proceeds go to local communities instead of extracting community power for corporate interests.

And we need 100% people-powered politicians in office to do so.

In solidarity,

Maebe