Solving the climate crisis comes with tough choices.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Jamali. Three years ago, the Biden administration put out a report all about gaps in the supply chain for electric vehicles.

It estimated global demand for lithium and graphite would grow by more than 4,000 percent by 2040 if the world were to achieve climate goals laid out in the Paris Accords.

These materials along with copper, nickel, and others are critical to green technologies, and there is a global fight over supply.

One that Reuters correspondent Ernest Schreider documents in his new book, The War Below.

He told me why lithium in particular is in such high demand.

So lithium is a metal that is extremely light and it also is great at conducting a charge

which so you can imagine why it would be so important for a battery,

especially in an electric vehicle and other household appliances, because it's so light that makes the battery light

and that makes the car go a lot farther with the power that's inside the battery.

So it forms the core of lithium ion batteries as the name implies and it's become extremely popular

and not just electric vehicles, but millions of other handhold

electronic devices across the globe. Yeah and one of the places that's been

targeted for mining lithium here in the US is Rhyolite Ridge.

This is the site of a massive lithium deposit in Nevada,

but it's also been a very controversial site

as far as mining lithium there.

Why is that? Walk us through that controversy.

Sure, this site also features a rare flower that's found nowhere else on the planet

and this flower loves this lithium-rich soil.

And it really brings to the reader this idea of choice.

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