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    Living Minerals

    Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium

    Part of Urban and Industrial Environments

    Author Javiera Barandiaran
    Ebook
    The MIT Press
    On sale Jan 13, 2026 | 296 Pages | 9780262385367
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    A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability.

    Consumers today are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiarán examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the two oldest brine-lithium mines: Silver Peak, Nevada, and Salar de Atacama, Chile, where lithium is found as one more element in a liquid mix of salts, minerals, and organisms.

    For six decades, mining experts have failed to ask about water usage, about waste or brine leakage, and about the ecosystem impacts in delicate deserts. Instead, they have relied on various fictions about the size of reserves, the fate of leaked brine, or the value of waste in facilitating mine development. These fictions, rooted in brine-lithium’s material qualities, could be sustained thanks to powerful mining memories that celebrated resource nationalism. Unique in its historical and multidimensional approach to minerals and mining, based on the novel Rights of Nature paradigm, and using new archival materials from both Chile and the US, the book argues that decarbonizing society requires that we reckon with these realities—or risk deepening our dependency on an unsustainable mining industry.
    Acknowledgments
    Acronyms and Company Names
    Map 1: Western US
    Map 2: Northern Chile
    Map 3: Atacama Desert and Salt Flat, Chile
    Introduction
    1 Exhausting Natures: Fragile Deserts, Constant Science
    2 Mining Memories: The Nitrate and Copper Trades
    3 Estimating Lithium Reserves for Tomorrow’s Energy Technologies
    4 Industrial Science and Desert Brines in Nevada and Chile
    5 Managing Brines for Future Generations
    Conclusion
    Appendix: Archive Abbreviations and Interviews Completed
    Notes
    References
    Index
    Javiera Barandiarán is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has published four books, including Science and Environment in Chile (MIT Press). For her research on lithium mining, she won a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.
    Javiera Barandiaran View titles by Javiera Barandiaran

    About

    A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability.

    Consumers today are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiarán examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the two oldest brine-lithium mines: Silver Peak, Nevada, and Salar de Atacama, Chile, where lithium is found as one more element in a liquid mix of salts, minerals, and organisms.

    For six decades, mining experts have failed to ask about water usage, about waste or brine leakage, and about the ecosystem impacts in delicate deserts. Instead, they have relied on various fictions about the size of reserves, the fate of leaked brine, or the value of waste in facilitating mine development. These fictions, rooted in brine-lithium’s material qualities, could be sustained thanks to powerful mining memories that celebrated resource nationalism. Unique in its historical and multidimensional approach to minerals and mining, based on the novel Rights of Nature paradigm, and using new archival materials from both Chile and the US, the book argues that decarbonizing society requires that we reckon with these realities—or risk deepening our dependency on an unsustainable mining industry.

    Table of Contents

    Acknowledgments
    Acronyms and Company Names
    Map 1: Western US
    Map 2: Northern Chile
    Map 3: Atacama Desert and Salt Flat, Chile
    Introduction
    1 Exhausting Natures: Fragile Deserts, Constant Science
    2 Mining Memories: The Nitrate and Copper Trades
    3 Estimating Lithium Reserves for Tomorrow’s Energy Technologies
    4 Industrial Science and Desert Brines in Nevada and Chile
    5 Managing Brines for Future Generations
    Conclusion
    Appendix: Archive Abbreviations and Interviews Completed
    Notes
    References
    Index

    Author

    Javiera Barandiarán is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has published four books, including Science and Environment in Chile (MIT Press). For her research on lithium mining, she won a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.
    Javiera Barandiaran View titles by Javiera Barandiaran

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