>

I gave it up for different reasons, primarily that cows don’t like to be eaten, but same result. 
When I was young, everyone was talking about the 50 ways to save the Earth like banning 6-pack soda plastic rings. In reality, there are three or four Big things that make a huge impact: eating less meat, mining less fossil fuels, and one or more other high-impact solutions. 
Humans are not capable of discerning the difference between things that are orders of magnitude difference of impact. 50+% of land used for farming and ranching. 0.06% for mining. Yet the latter will get all of the attention.
US has lots of Lithium reserves.
In high-tech Utah, is lithium mining the industry of the future?
It's an evaporation process.  Ironically, the Great Salt Lake is drying up.
Great Salt Lake on track to disappear in five years, scientists warn
Challenge is to keep the Lithium and other toxic minerals from blowing away. >

So does the Congo in Africa. They are gonna tear that jungle up. >

Also, no. Stop giving out loans to private companies regardless of the conditions you set unless you’re actually going to do something when they don’t follow the set rules. >

Pretty sure we need to reform the mining act first, if we ever want to modernize or improve the industry. >

If the environment is a concern... a lithium mine and then the processing of the ore is a horrible idea >

I think more people are starting to understand we don’t live in an ideological vacuum and supply chains that arguably support national security are a reality. Even if it means sacrificing principles in the short term >

People don’t like the reality that everything we do has environmental impact. 
They also worship the farming and ranching that has devastated a large fraction of the world, but are outraged by a small amount of land being used for mining. Tasty cows = good. Yucky lithium = bad. >


Tasty cows = good. Yucky lithium = bad.

Not all of us.  The fact it takes almost 2,000 gallons of water to make one pound of beef is one of the top reasons I gave it up. I fear Norman Borlaug killed the world by inventing an agricultural method that focused on heavy fertilizer use and used 10 times the water than normal all in the name of higher output. 
Granted, as I understand it, his intent was to feed the world, but we're just so ignorant of the way the world works we don't truly know the full outcome of our actions.