Workers with Millenial Lithium drill into the Pastos Grandes Salar in their search for optimal areas to gather the metal. Battery grade lithium, used for mobile phones and electric vehicles, can command prices as high as US$20,000 a ton. Many critics say environmental costs, mainly the draining of aquifers, some that took over 500,000 years to collect, will decimate the ecosystem. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
