White Gold: Elon Musk and the Race for Argentina’s Lithium
“Please, please, Mr Elon Musk: We need water. We need our land.”
Beneath remote salt flats in northern Argentina lie some of the world’s largest reserves of lithium. The mineral known as ‘white gold’ is critical to powering the energy transition. Multinational mining firms are descending to supply companies like Tesla, and Elon Musk is cosying up to ‘anarcho-capitalist’ Argentine President Javier Milei.
But what about the communities who have lived in this region and tended the land for generations, who now fear that lithium mining is exhausting their water supply – will the world heed their warnings?
From the Lithium Triangle to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., from the Indigenous Peoples of Catamarca to Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Javier Milei, White Gold tracks the human impact of the green transition.