What Happens in Lithium Valley . . .
By Manuel Pastor*
In a dusty corner of southeastern California, the contradictions and tensions of our move from a fossil fuel past to a clean energy future are on full display.
Imperial Valley hosts the Salton Sea, a landlocked body of water whose salinity and toxicity have caused it to be labeled an “environmental disaster zone.” As its waters have receded, exposed dust has kicked up, leading to childhood asthma rates at least two to three times national average.
The local economy has historically thrived on the exploitation of agricultural labor, including the regular use of migrant and undocumented workers. It’s also a sort of poster child for “racial capitalism.” Local museums celebrate “Pioneers’ Days,” obscuring the fact that indigenous groups lived here for thousands of years. The population is about 85 percent Latinos—a testimony to the demand for cheaper labor—but that supermajority is close to poverty and far from power.
And it has enough lithium under the surface to redo the entire American auto fleet to electricity and have 100 million batteries left over.
Little wonder that it has attracted the supercharged interest of corporate investors and state officials. Adding fuel to the fire are enthusiastic environmentalists: because the lithium would be pulled from geothermal reserves rather than generated from hard rock mining or desert evaporation ponds, this promises to be the cleanest, greenest method of extraction on the planet.
But while officials are busy renaming the locale “Lithium Valley” and billing it as the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” local communities are worried that they will be run over by development and left behind in the boom. The initial skirmishes between community and corporations were about how and how much to tax the emerging lithium companies. Since then, lawsuits have been filed to provoke more extensive environmental reviews of the extraction process. And most recently, community groups have come together in a formal alliance—Valle Unido—to fight for guaranteed community benefits.
It might seem like a set of issues confined to this hardscrabble part of the Golden State. But the issue of who wins and who loses runs all the way through our energy transition. The labor strikes that roiled the auto industry in 2023, the current fights against the Trump administration’s rejection of environmental justice policies, and many other related struggles all seek to lift up communities that have been left behind and kept behind.
And while it is easy to think in the current moment that electric vehicles (EVs) will stall and demand for batteries will fall, consider how far along auto manufacturers are on the road to leaving behind oil or how red state governors that forcefully reject climate change realities still eagerly accept climate-related dollars. So EV’s and clean energy are likely here to stay. The question is whether equity will be part of the future—or will such concerns be sacrificed by companies eager for a profit or downplayed by environmentalists eager for a rapid transition.
On this Earth Day 2025, it is important to remember for those of us committed to sustainability that not all that is green will necessarily deliver for communities that have been overexposed and underemployed. While a move away from fossil fuels and toward a better future clearly requires changing the source of power, a truly just future will come only if we also have a strategy for changing the balance of power.
* Manuel Pastor is the co-author, along with Chris Benner, of Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future. Both authors collaborated with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth in a new documentary about this topic called A Better Next Big Thing.
