Lithium Nevada is Planning to Double the Size of the Thacker Pass Mine

Welcome to Biocentric, a newsletter about sustainability, overshoot, greenwashing, and resistance. It’s written by me, Max Wilbert, the co-author of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do About It, co-founder of Protect Thacker Pass, and organizer with the Community Legal Environmental Defense Fund.

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In this video, I discuss:

• How Lithium Nevada corporation is now planning to double the size of the Thacker Pass lithium mine, expanding their open pit to nearly three times it’s originally planned size and destroying the entirety of Thacker Pass from east to west and north to south.

• The method called “breadcrumb permitting” that allows project expansions like this to fly under the radar bypass public opposition and scrutiny, and facilitate corporate power.

• Updates to the Protect Thacker Pass campaign timeline, including more dirt on how the government permitted the recent $2.26 billion loan to Lithium Nevada Corporation by once again ignoring the sacred nature of Thacker Pass, ignoring tribal opposition, and relying on information they know is outdated and inaccurate.

• The ongoing genocide being conducted by the Zionist Israeli state in Palestine, a forthcoming interview on the domestic repression with attorney Terry Lodge, and the connection between mineral extraction on U.S. public lands and weapons being provided to the Israeli military that are made using these minerals.

• A brief reflection on the book I just finished reading: Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman.

The upper map, taken from the 2021 Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Thacker Pass lithium mine, shows the project as it was initially planned. Of course, it’s likely that Lithium Nevada planned a much larger mine all along. They simply knew that permitting would be easier, and public opposition lower, if they obfuscated the truth. The full extent of the mine is revealed in the lower map, which was released in Lithium Nevada’s December 31, 2024 technical report. Of course, they may be planning future mine expansions in coming years; LNC has dozens of mining claims in the Montana Mountains to the north of Thacker Pass.

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I’m planning to record videos like this as regularly as possible in coming months, and I’d like to make them interactive, so if there are any questions or topics you’d like to hear about, please let me know.