Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Portugal Is At War With Itself Over ‘White Gold’

News Feed
Sunday, May 26, 2024

COVAS DO BARROSO, Portugal — For centuries, Aida Fernandes’ family has lived in this village nestled in the rugged mountains that crown the northern border with Spain, with generation after generation grazing cattle and growing grapes in lush green fields.Then, in 2010, a wildfire — one of the growing number of blazes scorching this part of Europe as the climate changes — engulfed the verdant foothills encircling Fernandes’ ancient home.The rustic stone houses and towering persimmon trees of Fernandes’ remote town of about 100 people remained intact, but there was plenty of damage to the surrounding area. With time, though, the wounded landscape healed. Dense stands of maritime pines regrew to cover the charred bare ridges. Enough Erica lusitanica, or Portuguese heath, sprouted between the skinny evergreens’ trunks to make the ground look like brushstrokes in an impressionist painting. Wild fruit trees returned, bearing juicy berries with red skin and yellow meat that locals call medronheiros and ferment into alcohol. The culture, too, showed signs of a rebound, as the region’s unique farming traditions and indigenous livestock breeds made it one of the only places in Europe to win a spot on a worldwide list of “agricultural heritage systems” worthy of conservation.But around that same time, Fernandes registered a new threat to her land — one that, while slower-moving, could change things forever. It came not from a “what” but a “whom”: an invasion, with huge ramifications for Europe’s climate goals and Portugal’s political stability.With the help of the national government, the lithium mining industry promises to transform this forgotten region into the European Union’s largest operation for digging the metal ― prized for its role in electric vehicles ― out of the earth. More prospectors were arriving by the month to bore cylindrical holes into rock and take samples. As time went on, Fernandes accused workers of trespassing on land where they had no legal rights, an allegation the mining company denied.Seemingly overnight, Fernandes, 45, became the de facto leader of the resistance, a self-described David leading a ragtag coalition of farmers, environmentalists and itinerant hippies. They were up against the twin Goliaths of an international corporation and the Portuguese state, with backing from at least a handful of villagers who believed mining would mean a financial boost for themselves and their region.One Friday in November, Fernandes’ new responsibility — an exhausting third job on top of farming and raising three kids — meant going on patrol to check whether the prospectors were advancing. Peering at the horizon through the dusty windshield of her red Toyota pickup, she spotted a single plume of white smoke. Fernandes let out something between a gasp and a sigh.“They’re here,” she said. Roughly 200 feet down the ridge, a crew of three hard-hatted workers made use of the waning daylight to dig a little deeper into the exposed rock, casting up a continuous puff of diesel exhaust and dust. Men had been showing up on lands owned collectively by the villagers for months. Fernandes and her cohort tried blocking the road when they saw them coming, but this afternoon she was too late. More workers were coming more often, with armed police not far behind — an intimidating sight for residents who lived through the fascist dictatorship that ruled Portugal from the Great Depression until the 1970s.The industry is in a Catch-22. Lithium is the main component in the power packs that propel electric vehicles and store energy from weather-dependent renewables, like wind and solar, for later use. Investors hoping to cash in on the transition from fossil fuels to batteries and electricity call it “white gold.” Consumers in rich parts of Europe and North America demand products made with metals unearthed with minimal environmental damage, but have literally stood in the way of mines in countries with some of the highest regulatory standards in the world. Even under optimistic scenarios for how much metal recycling can recirculate into the battery supply chain, analysts say both continents need to mine more raw lithium ― and officials from Washington to Brussels are dangling new incentives for companies to do so. Yet Savannah Resources, the mining company pursuing the lithium under Covas do Barroso, finds itself fending off villagers’ lawsuits in local court in Portugal. New legal cases “coupled with the increased stream of negative media coverage in the second half of the year are a cause for ongoing frustration,” Matthew King, Savannah Resources’ chairman, wrote in a year-end letter to investors in December. “However, we will continue to communicate the positive benefits of our project for the local community, Portugal and indeed Europe as a whole, and our efforts to minimise any and all negative impacts it may have.”Aida Fernandes, 45, at her farm in Covas do Barroso, the village where her family has farmed for centuries.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostTensions were growing. Temperatures were surging. Fernandes was staring down the plans that some of the world’s most powerful governments and financiers had for her tiny, ancient village. And time was running out. With final mining permits still pending, the only question was: For whom?The Dawn Of Portugal’s Lithium Rush There is a lot of “white gold” in the hills around Covas do Barroso. There’s enough, according to the British mining company paying the prospectors to drill rock samples of the landscape, to manufacture nearly 600,000 electric vehicles annually — more than three times the number of new cars sold in Portugal in a good year.Someone just needs to dig the yellowish spodumene rocks out of the ground, cart them away, crush the ore, roast and chemically treat the dust, and eventually sell the resulting lithium concentrate to any of the dozens of battery factories under construction across Europe. London-based Savannah Resources wants to be that someone. This year, the company, which said it has the rights to 93 hectares of land — roughly 230 acres, sold by more than 40 local landowners — around the village already, is set to finish its permitting process. Next year, the firm is scheduled to start the real work on opening its Barroso mine, and plans to build a chemical plant next to the open pit to process the ore in-house.By the end of the decade, Savannah envisions remaking this region into a key node in the clean-energy supply chain the European Union and the United States are banking on to free their economies of both carbon emission and China, which controls the vast majority of the world’s production of metals for batteries and solar panels.“The Barroso Lithium Project is one of the most strategically important lithium projects in Europe, and we are delighted to be progressing so well,” the company said in an email to HuffPost. The European Union currently uses 230,000 metric tons of lithium per year, but the energy consultancy Benchmark Minerals forecasts that demand will more than triple to 700,000 metric tons by 2030. The EU enacted its Critical Raw Materials Act just last month, setting ambitious targets for how much lithium the bloc aims to mine and process within its own borders.Most of the world’s lithium is currently produced in southern South America or Australia, then processed in China. As the push for electric cars drives up demand, other countries have joined the rush, with some making rules that require companies to process the ore locally, potentially limiting how much European refiners could get without mining the metal themselves.In 2022, the U.S. passed its first major climate law, unleashing a historic spending spree on everything from new nuclear reactors to electric cars. Congress reserved the most lucrative federal tax credits in the legislation for new Teslas or Chevy Bolts with batteries made with metals mined in the U.S., or in countries with which the U.S. has a free-trade agreement.In November, the European Union brokered a new deal to work with the U.S. to increase the amount of so-called critical minerals being produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Under the Critical Raw Materials Act passed four months later, the EU needs to mine 10% of its own lithium, but process at least 40% ― a requirement the bloc can meet by importing raw ore from abroad or recycling used batteries at home.“There will obviously be an effort to develop as much upstream mining capacity in Europe as possible,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, a London-based analyst at the market research firm Benchmark Minerals. “But no one is expecting Europe to suddenly become a huge mining region. Europe will probably never have a massive mining economy unless there’s a whole change in culture.” With Europe charging ahead on going electric, and the U.S. offering its allies privileged access to a car market where, even in a slump, more new vehicles are sold each year than there are people in Portugal, the government in Lisbon saw an opening. Portugal had a history of mining metals like tungsten, and an auto manufacturing industry already employing upward of 150,000 Portuguese workers and paying more than one-fifth of the country’s tax revenues. Savannah’s project, meanwhile, would satisfy both the EU’s mining and processing targets.Outgoing Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa answers questions after reviewing his eight years in office at a March 27 press conference in Sao Bento, the official residence of the prime minister, in Lisbon.Horacio Villalobos via Getty Images“Lithium is something that is so important for new technologies,” said António Costa Pinto, a research professor at the University of Lisbon and one of the country’s best-known political scientists. “It was an economic opportunity that Portugal could not pass up.” Savannah’s proposal has attracted the most international attention, but the rush for lithium in Portugal — and the controversy surrounding it — actually began with a local company, Lusorecursos. The company won a government permit to begin prospecting for tin and tungsten in the foothills around Montalegre, but it was long plagued by allegations of fraud. Lusorecursos remained embroiled in lawsuits as recently as this year. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Both Lusorecursos and Savannah got the green light from regulators in 2023 to move forward on mining. Both companies were then dragged into the nationwide scandal that erupted in early November, when prosecutors announced an investigation into alleged corruption in the licensing process for the lithium mines and another clean-energy project, a hydrogen facility. While only his deputies were named in the probe, Prime Minister António Costa resigned in disgrace.The companies said they were cooperating with investigators. Portuguese prosecutors asked a judge to annul Savannah’s environmental permit in February, but the courts have yet to do so.In an email, Savannah said its own independent investigation in January “concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the company,” and noted that its work has continued “unencumbered” since the probe was first made public.“Our teams are on the ground, our current drilling programme has produced some very positive results,” the company said in May.If all goes according to plan, Savannah will complete its final feasibility study by the end of this year and advance to the last phase of the permitting process shortly afterward. Its prospecting work has continued.‘They Want To Wear Us Down.’I arrived in Covas do Barroso less than two weeks after the prime minister resigned, with the goal of seeing the front lines of the European Union’s biggest “lithium war,” the hyperbolic term that journalists and advocates like to use for conflicts between miners and local opponents.A giant banner calling for “no mining” fluttered in a traffic circle in Boticas roughly 20 minutes from the village. But the place seemed otherwise peaceful. An elderly farmer in a tweed cap waved as he brought his cattle to heel and let my car pass, as I questioned whether my rental could fit down the narrow cobblestone street where Fernandes lives. I parked outside her house, and hopped into the front seat of her pickup. She was on duty, and she had comrades waiting for her.Mariana Riquito, 26, is a grad student in sociology who is studying the anti-mining movement in Covas do Barroso.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostFor months, prospectors working for Savannah had been showing up on property that opponents say is clearly outside the bounds of the tracts the company has purchased.“They’re prospecting on my land without my permission,” said Catarina Scarrott, 46, a teacher from Covas do Barroso who now lives in London. “The limits of the land have been set up for 200 years or more, and everyone in the village knows what the limits of the land are.”Scarrott is Fernandes’ cousin, and visits the village regularly. She said she could prove the land is hers, but by the time she could get a court to intervene, Savannah “will have prospected already.” The village of Covas do Barroso has at least three active lawsuits against Savannah, the company disclosed in its latest financial report to shareholders. But all the litigation is pending, part of a drawn-out legal process. “They want to wear us down,” she said. “They know the court system is slow. They don’t care about the penalties they’ll get, because all they want to do is prospect. If they can’t prospect, they can’t prove they’ve got enough material to mine.”The company told investors its lawyers said “any discrepancies in the land borders” would result in “the land returned” to the village. Savannah said a “generous offer has been made” to buy the remaining land, threatening to “use the Portuguese legal system to secure the land” if “it is not possible to secure the remainder of the land required by mutual agreement.”At issue is the fact that a portion of the land surrounding Covas do Barroso is owned communally among the villagers. In Portugal, rural towns have traditionally exercised collective control over areas of land called “baldios,” which the communities can either manage themselves or oversee with the help of national conservation authorities. “Savannah and its contractors have been working only on land which the Company either owns or has been granted permission to enter,” the company said in its emailed statement.There was a gushing river between the village’s cobblestone street and the dirt road that leads through the communally owned lands where the Savannah workers had begun digging. Fernandes and her fellow anti-mining activists have feared that the mining will cause the underground reservoir to drop, wells to run dry, and any remaining water to become contaminated. Last year, Savannah revised its initial pitch in regulatory documents to include more water protections. The company said its mine will operate as a “closed system” with “water treatment and sediment removal systems” in place to “ensure water quality on and off site is maintained.” In all, the company said it would tap less than 1% of the area’s groundwater, and that it had committed to daily monitoring for quality and cleanliness.It also sweetened the deal for Covas do Barroso, according to João Cerejeira, an economist at the University of Minho who analyzed the Savannah project’s impacts.Savannah said its concession only covers 0.5% of the Barroso agricultural region ― and “guaranteed” it would backfill and rehabilitate each area it mines, “permanently” impacting “less than 0.25%” of the heritage zone. The company abandoned plans to operate 24/7, promised to impose strict time and noise limits on the mining operation, and budgeted to build a new road so its trucks don’t cause traffic. Savannah also pledged annual donations to a local charity, and vowed to fund cultural research and breeding programs for native livestock. Aurik Antunes, 33, a Portuguese artist and barber living in Covas do Barroso, Portugal, visits a waterfall, one of the natural waterways local opponents of the lithium project fear will be threatened by the mining.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostSuch benefits were “not in the other versions” of proposals Savannah put forward, Cerejeira said. “It’s an opportunity for the region,” Cerejeira said. “The region is losing population year by year. If they don’t have a project that will attract more people, more employment and more families to be living there... in the next decade the municipality will probably disappear. In terms of major services like post offices, schools and banks, you won’t have them because there won’t be enough humans.”Fernandes and her cohort don’t see it that way. And if they couldn’t stop the mine altogether, their plan was to delay it as much as possible to at least test Savannah investors’ will to keep funding a company without revenues. Locals took turns playing sentinel, parking near the entrance to the communal baldio lands and preparing to summon reinforcements to block any mining trucks driving in to work.Some days it proved effective, and Fernandes and her friends managed to keep the diesel trucks hauling prospecting equipment from reaching their destination. Other times, as I would later learn, it was a fruitless endeavor — and a distraction from necessary daily farming tasks.When Fernandes saw the smoke on the horizon, indicating that the workers had begun boring into the bedrock before anyone could spot them, she seemed crestfallen and frustrated. She drove off the paved street and onto the muddy road that ascends the pine-covered hillsides of the common lands surrounding the village. Roughly 100 feet up, she stopped the truck in front of two young people.Mariana Riquito, 26, had first come to Covas do Barroso in September 2021 to study the local pushback for her Ph.D. thesis in sociology. Beside her stood Aurik Antunes, 33, a barber and artist who was also drawn here by the conflict, but found it so peaceful they decided to stay and set up a sanctuary retreat for queer people struggling with trauma.They both hopped in the back of the pickup. Further up the road, we encountered a tall man in a fedora and long cargo shorts walking barefoot in the mud. Originally from Waterbury, Connecticut, Steven Silva Dias, 37, had returned to his parents’ native Portugal and found a sense of belonging in a local chapter of the Rainbow Gathering. The loose-knit, hippie-founded spiritual movement first cropped up in the U.S. in the 1970s to oppose the war in Vietnam. It survives today in the form of regular monthlong encampments where, for a full moon cycle, participants live off the land, bathe naked in streams, and engage in rituals of breathing and physical touch that are meant to erode ego.Covas do Barroso’s mining conflict had drawn the Rainbow Gathering, which set up its temporary camp of tents and teepees in October. Dias, too, hopped in the back of the truck. Steven Silva Dias, 37, a member of the Rainbow Gathering spiritual movement, came to Covas do Barroso to take part in a protest and encampment to connect with the region's nature.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostWe drove another five minutes before reaching the ridge above where the workers were taking rock samples. “See what they do?” Dias sneered.The whole affair felt pretty benign. The workers made noise and cast up dust from machinery, but the operation was confined to a small area. The activists leered from the ridgetop above the work site, but did not approach or confront the crew. There seemed to be an understanding: If opponents blocked the road, the workers wouldn’t push through. But if the prospectors got started before advocates could obstruct their vehicles, no one would try to physically stop them. Fernandes planned a show of force for the next day, which she organized in a private WhatsApp chat of local activists. She would lead a march of villagers to where Savannah had been taking samples that night, and prevent any more drilling — a demonstration of solidarity ahead of a town meeting where Fernandes hoped her neighbors would vote to pursue legal action against Savannah. But first, she would make an discomfiting discovery: Her movement had a mole.‘Come Quick. The Police Are Everywhere.’My phone rang as I was finishing breakfast the next morning, about an hour before Fernandes’ march was scheduled to begin.“Come quick. Please,” Fernandes said. “The police are everywhere.”I drove fast down the twisting roads to Covas do Barroso. Two police SUVs blocked the road at the entrance to the village, but officers eventually got out of the way to let me pass.About two dozen protesters were gathered at the defunct schoolhouse in the center of the village. We drove to the start of the dirt road going through the common lands, got out, and hiked the rest of the way to where the workers had been the night before. There were no prospectors. But the police were circling the roads.The crowd stood in the mud. Some eyed the surrounding ridges with binoculars, trying to spot miners. None appeared. Two Rainbow Gathering members began arguing in English over the ethics of smoking tobacco. A third rolled a cigarette by hand. “I wonder if someone could explain why we’re here,” said a man wearing a wool poncho and carrying a large skin drum. “My brother says it’s to meet the land.” Fernandes broke in and began giving a speech describing why her cohort believed a lithium mine would ruin this ancient farming community. She explained that Savannah had won a preliminary permit last May and could receive final approvals by next spring.A national police vehicle drives past Aida Fernandes' farm on patrol. The police presence has increased as opposition to mining has become more visible.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost“We’re here to demonstrate that we have no fear, and to alert people to what’s going on,” she said.Another Rainbow Gathering member asked if the lithium was going to Big Pharma. Riquito expounded on how electric cars were driving up demand for the metal, and that digging all that out of the ground here would destroy the local environment, without even adding that much to the global supply. The poncho’d drummer asked if it was OK to read a message he was carrying from a tribe in Colombia. He read out the famous 1990 statement from the Kogi people to the world, warning humanity of nature’s wrath should industrial development continue apace.Fernandes left the gathering early to complete some farm work. Her mind was elsewhere. “Someone alerted the police,” she said. “Someone in the group.”The police later told me it received a tip about a planned demonstration, and sent reinforcements to maintain “public order and tranquility.” But the National Republican Guard, as the country’s police force is known, acknowledged it had expanded patrols in Covas do Barroso generally as protests picked up over the past year. “The increase in police presence in the village... can be justified by the presence of a climate of tension among the population, who in general were opposed to the entry of the lithium exploration company into the vacant land in the region, a situation which generated a lot of media attention nationally and internationally,” said Ana Isabel Morais, a spokesperson for Portugal’s National Republican Guard.That night, Fernandes led a town meeting at the village hall. This was what the protest was setting the stage for, a show of force to fellow villagers that momentum was building against the mine. It seemed to work. The majority in attendance voted in favor of opposing the mine, and considered additional litigation to stop it. The vote didn’t translate into any specific legal action, making it mostly symbolic. But when Fernandes came home to find her husband, her daughter and her daughter-in-law sharing cheese, bread and wine by the fire, she was glowing with pride.From that point on, she said, the village has kept at least one guard at the worksite where the prospectors had been that Friday in November, preventing the company from collecting its equipment or continuing its sampling at that location. The Other SideNot everyone was pleased.Lucillia Mó, 60, was among nearly four dozen people in the village who Savannah says have sold the company a cumulative 100 plots as of last month. She couldn’t recall exactly how much land, or how much money she earned — it was a small parcel far from the village itself — but she said it was a “fair price.”A protest sign opposing the lithium mine in Boticas, Portugal, reads "Lives yes! Mines no!"Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostShe has lived in Covas do Barroso her entire life, and can remember what it used to be like here. The schools were filled with kids. “A lot of people leave this area because there aren’t enough jobs,” Mó said. Her brother, she added, “already said if it goes ahead, he’d like to work in the mine.”She brushed off concerns about water pollution and trucks, saying she was more concerned about the social isolation she’d felt after not joining the resistance movement. “They stopped speaking to me,” Mó said. “I’m free to have my own opinion, and I have the right to decide to sell whatever land my parents left me if I need the money, so there’s no need for them to punish me.”Fernandes said she had no issue with Mó’s decision to sell her land. The problem, she said, was that Mó’s land deal initially included part of the baldio she had no legal right to sell.“We’re not against the people who sell,” Fernandes said. “We’re against the people who try to steal the baldio land.” If anyone should be mad, Mó said, it’s villagers like her who never invited all these newcomers into Covas do Barroso.“There are groups of people who come in. We don’t know who they are or what they do. It’s not that we’re against new people coming. But they were naked,” she said, referring to activists like the Rainbow Gathering group who bathed outside.“A few months ago, I found two of them in one of my fields picking my chestnuts,” she added. “I asked them, ‘Who sent you here?’ And they couldn’t respond because they don’t speak Portuguese. I don’t like that.” It’s unclear how many other villagers shared her sentiment. No patron at a crowded village bar and café one afternoon wanted to talk about the mine to an American journalist speaking through a translator, and the vote at the town meeting seemed to indicate widespread opposition. “She is a very special person,” Fernandes said sarcastically of Mó. The BBC, Reuters and Euronews had sent reporters to the remote village, and each came back with a similar David-vs.-Goliath narrative about resistance to the mine. A new documentary starring Fernandes premiered last week in France at the Cannes Film Festival. I reached out to Savannah over a month before I was scheduled to visit Portugal, and the company, through an outside publicity firm, ultimately declined to meet with me during my visit.I contacted the company again months later, asking if they would introduce me to some villagers who sold the firm their land. After weeks of going back and forth, Savannah arranged phone calls with two.Cows graze at Aida Fernandes' farm in Covas do Barroso, Portugal.Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPostMaciel Alves sold Savannah 7 acres for 150,000 euros. A granite quarryman by trade, he said he understands the risks of lithium mining and believes the opposition is exaggerating the potential tradeoffs.“The real risks are if it doesn’t go ahead,” Alves, 43, said by phone in March. “Things will stay the same and nothing will change. Our region will keep getting more and more abandoned.”The mine, he said, would bring royalty payments and money.“Everybody works for money, and it comes in handy,” he said.That’s particularly true as the seasons and land he once counted on become less reliable. Alves remembered the blaze that nearly turned the village to ash. “The wildfire took everything in Covas,” he said. “The land all burned down. The trees all burned down. My parent’s land, it all got affected.”The flames couldn’t lick the cash in his checking account, he said. On my final night in Boticas, after sharing dinner with Antunes, I drove back to the neighboring village where I was staying. The inky blackness of night was overpowering. In New York City, I rarely see that much darkness. I pulled onto the side of the road, parked the car, turned the lights off and got out. The cloudless sky was splattered with stars. I wondered how many generations of gazers had taken in this same view at this exact location. Finally craning my neck downward, I saw a blink of red light. Then another. Another. Along the horizon, on a distant ridgeline, a row of red lights flickering on and off. Wind turbines.A week later, the Spanish government finalized its plans to shut down the Iberian Peninsula’s last nuclear reactors in the next few years, leaving Portugal, which shares a power grid with its neighbor, with little choice but to build a lot more batteries if the lights are going to stay on when the wind dies down and the sky turns dark. If the speed of deliberate change didn’t hasten, nature would set the pace. That would mean more wildfires, more “smokenados,” and more drought, like the latest one parching Iberia. With lithium demand soaring year over year in the U.S., China and Europe, how long could this region really keep mining at bay?

European leaders want to transform this forgotten farming region into the continent's largest lithium mining operation — and locals are fighting back.

COVAS DO BARROSO, Portugal — For centuries, Aida Fernandes’ family has lived in this village nestled in the rugged mountains that crown the northern border with Spain, with generation after generation grazing cattle and growing grapes in lush green fields.

Then, in 2010, a wildfire — one of the growing number of blazes scorching this part of Europe as the climate changes — engulfed the verdant foothills encircling Fernandes’ ancient home.

The rustic stone houses and towering persimmon trees of Fernandes’ remote town of about 100 people remained intact, but there was plenty of damage to the surrounding area. With time, though, the wounded landscape healed. Dense stands of maritime pines regrew to cover the charred bare ridges. Enough Erica lusitanica, or Portuguese heath, sprouted between the skinny evergreens’ trunks to make the ground look like brushstrokes in an impressionist painting. Wild fruit trees returned, bearing juicy berries with red skin and yellow meat that locals call medronheiros and ferment into alcohol. The culture, too, showed signs of a rebound, as the region’s unique farming traditions and indigenous livestock breeds made it one of the only places in Europe to win a spot on a worldwide list of “agricultural heritage systems” worthy of conservation.

But around that same time, Fernandes registered a new threat to her land — one that, while slower-moving, could change things forever. It came not from a “what” but a “whom”: an invasion, with huge ramifications for Europe’s climate goals and Portugal’s political stability.

With the help of the national government, the lithium mining industry promises to transform this forgotten region into the European Union’s largest operation for digging the metal ― prized for its role in electric vehicles ― out of the earth. More prospectors were arriving by the month to bore cylindrical holes into rock and take samples. As time went on, Fernandes accused workers of trespassing on land where they had no legal rights, an allegation the mining company denied.

Seemingly overnight, Fernandes, 45, became the de facto leader of the resistance, a self-described David leading a ragtag coalition of farmers, environmentalists and itinerant hippies. They were up against the twin Goliaths of an international corporation and the Portuguese state, with backing from at least a handful of villagers who believed mining would mean a financial boost for themselves and their region.

One Friday in November, Fernandes’ new responsibility — an exhausting third job on top of farming and raising three kids — meant going on patrol to check whether the prospectors were advancing. Peering at the horizon through the dusty windshield of her red Toyota pickup, she spotted a single plume of white smoke. Fernandes let out something between a gasp and a sigh.

“They’re here,” she said.

Roughly 200 feet down the ridge, a crew of three hard-hatted workers made use of the waning daylight to dig a little deeper into the exposed rock, casting up a continuous puff of diesel exhaust and dust.

Men had been showing up on lands owned collectively by the villagers for months. Fernandes and her cohort tried blocking the road when they saw them coming, but this afternoon she was too late. More workers were coming more often, with armed police not far behind — an intimidating sight for residents who lived through the fascist dictatorship that ruled Portugal from the Great Depression until the 1970s.

The industry is in a Catch-22. Lithium is the main component in the power packs that propel electric vehicles and store energy from weather-dependent renewables, like wind and solar, for later use. Investors hoping to cash in on the transition from fossil fuels to batteries and electricity call it “white gold.”

Consumers in rich parts of Europe and North America demand products made with metals unearthed with minimal environmental damage, but have literally stood in the way of mines in countries with some of the highest regulatory standards in the world. Even under optimistic scenarios for how much metal recycling can recirculate into the battery supply chain, analysts say both continents need to mine more raw lithium ― and officials from Washington to Brussels are dangling new incentives for companies to do so. Yet Savannah Resources, the mining company pursuing the lithium under Covas do Barroso, finds itself fending off villagers’ lawsuits in local court in Portugal.

New legal cases “coupled with the increased stream of negative media coverage in the second half of the year are a cause for ongoing frustration,” Matthew King, Savannah Resources’ chairman, wrote in a year-end letter to investors in December. “However, we will continue to communicate the positive benefits of our project for the local community, Portugal and indeed Europe as a whole, and our efforts to minimise any and all negative impacts it may have.”

Aida Fernandes, 45, at her farm in Covas do Barroso, the village where her family has farmed for centuries.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

Tensions were growing. Temperatures were surging. Fernandes was staring down the plans that some of the world’s most powerful governments and financiers had for her tiny, ancient village. And time was running out. With final mining permits still pending, the only question was: For whom?

The Dawn Of Portugal’s Lithium Rush

There is a lot of “white gold” in the hills around Covas do Barroso. There’s enough, according to the British mining company paying the prospectors to drill rock samples of the landscape, to manufacture nearly 600,000 electric vehicles annually — more than three times the number of new cars sold in Portugal in a good year.

Someone just needs to dig the yellowish spodumene rocks out of the ground, cart them away, crush the ore, roast and chemically treat the dust, and eventually sell the resulting lithium concentrate to any of the dozens of battery factories under construction across Europe.

London-based Savannah Resources wants to be that someone. This year, the company, which said it has the rights to 93 hectares of land — roughly 230 acres, sold by more than 40 local landowners — around the village already, is set to finish its permitting process. Next year, the firm is scheduled to start the real work on opening its Barroso mine, and plans to build a chemical plant next to the open pit to process the ore in-house.

By the end of the decade, Savannah envisions remaking this region into a key node in the clean-energy supply chain the European Union and the United States are banking on to free their economies of both carbon emission and China, which controls the vast majority of the world’s production of metals for batteries and solar panels.

The Barroso Lithium Project is one of the most strategically important lithium projects in Europe, and we are delighted to be progressing so well,” the company said in an email to HuffPost.

The European Union currently uses 230,000 metric tons of lithium per year, but the energy consultancy Benchmark Minerals forecasts that demand will more than triple to 700,000 metric tons by 2030. The EU enacted its Critical Raw Materials Act just last month, setting ambitious targets for how much lithium the bloc aims to mine and process within its own borders.

Most of the world’s lithium is currently produced in southern South America or Australia, then processed in China. As the push for electric cars drives up demand, other countries have joined the rush, with some making rules that require companies to process the ore locally, potentially limiting how much European refiners could get without mining the metal themselves.

In 2022, the U.S. passed its first major climate law, unleashing a historic spending spree on everything from new nuclear reactors to electric cars. Congress reserved the most lucrative federal tax credits in the legislation for new Teslas or Chevy Bolts with batteries made with metals mined in the U.S., or in countries with which the U.S. has a free-trade agreement.

In November, the European Union brokered a new deal to work with the U.S. to increase the amount of so-called critical minerals being produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Under the Critical Raw Materials Act passed four months later, the EU needs to mine 10% of its own lithium, but process at least 40% ― a requirement the bloc can meet by importing raw ore from abroad or recycling used batteries at home.

“There will obviously be an effort to develop as much upstream mining capacity in Europe as possible,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, a London-based analyst at the market research firm Benchmark Minerals. “But no one is expecting Europe to suddenly become a huge mining region. Europe will probably never have a massive mining economy unless there’s a whole change in culture.”

With Europe charging ahead on going electric, and the U.S. offering its allies privileged access to a car market where, even in a slump, more new vehicles are sold each year than there are people in Portugal, the government in Lisbon saw an opening. Portugal had a history of mining metals like tungsten, and an auto manufacturing industry already employing upward of 150,000 Portuguese workers and paying more than one-fifth of the country’s tax revenues. Savannah’s project, meanwhile, would satisfy both the EU’s mining and processing targets.

Outgoing Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa answers questions after reviewing his eight years in office at a March 27 press conference in Sao Bento, the official residence of the prime minister, in Lisbon.

Horacio Villalobos via Getty Images

“Lithium is something that is so important for new technologies,” said António Costa Pinto, a research professor at the University of Lisbon and one of the country’s best-known political scientists. “It was an economic opportunity that Portugal could not pass up.”

Savannah’s proposal has attracted the most international attention, but the rush for lithium in Portugal — and the controversy surrounding it — actually began with a local company, Lusorecursos. The company won a government permit to begin prospecting for tin and tungsten in the foothills around Montalegre, but it was long plagued by allegations of fraud. Lusorecursos remained embroiled in lawsuits as recently as this year. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Both Lusorecursos and Savannah got the green light from regulators in 2023 to move forward on mining.

Both companies were then dragged into the nationwide scandal that erupted in early November, when prosecutors announced an investigation into alleged corruption in the licensing process for the lithium mines and another clean-energy project, a hydrogen facility. While only his deputies were named in the probe, Prime Minister António Costa resigned in disgrace.

The companies said they were cooperating with investigators. Portuguese prosecutors asked a judge to annul Savannah’s environmental permit in February, but the courts have yet to do so.

In an email, Savannah said its own independent investigation in January “concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the company,” and noted that its work has continued “unencumbered” since the probe was first made public.

“Our teams are on the ground, our current drilling programme has produced some very positive results,” the company said in May.

If all goes according to plan, Savannah will complete its final feasibility study by the end of this year and advance to the last phase of the permitting process shortly afterward. Its prospecting work has continued.

‘They Want To Wear Us Down.’

I arrived in Covas do Barroso less than two weeks after the prime minister resigned, with the goal of seeing the front lines of the European Union’s biggest “lithium war,” the hyperbolic term that journalists and advocates like to use for conflicts between miners and local opponents.

A giant banner calling for “no mining” fluttered in a traffic circle in Boticas roughly 20 minutes from the village. But the place seemed otherwise peaceful. An elderly farmer in a tweed cap waved as he brought his cattle to heel and let my car pass, as I questioned whether my rental could fit down the narrow cobblestone street where Fernandes lives.

I parked outside her house, and hopped into the front seat of her pickup. She was on duty, and she had comrades waiting for her.

Mariana Riquito, 26, is a grad student in sociology who is studying the anti-mining movement in Covas do Barroso.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

For months, prospectors working for Savannah had been showing up on property that opponents say is clearly outside the bounds of the tracts the company has purchased.

“They’re prospecting on my land without my permission,” said Catarina Scarrott, 46, a teacher from Covas do Barroso who now lives in London. “The limits of the land have been set up for 200 years or more, and everyone in the village knows what the limits of the land are.”

Scarrott is Fernandes’ cousin, and visits the village regularly. She said she could prove the land is hers, but by the time she could get a court to intervene, Savannah “will have prospected already.” The village of Covas do Barroso has at least three active lawsuits against Savannah, the company disclosed in its latest financial report to shareholders. But all the litigation is pending, part of a drawn-out legal process.

“They want to wear us down,” she said. “They know the court system is slow. They don’t care about the penalties they’ll get, because all they want to do is prospect. If they can’t prospect, they can’t prove they’ve got enough material to mine.”

The company told investors its lawyers said “any discrepancies in the land borders” would result in “the land returned” to the village. Savannah said a “generous offer has been made” to buy the remaining land, threatening to “use the Portuguese legal system to secure the land” if “it is not possible to secure the remainder of the land required by mutual agreement.”

At issue is the fact that a portion of the land surrounding Covas do Barroso is owned communally among the villagers. In Portugal, rural towns have traditionally exercised collective control over areas of land called “baldios,” which the communities can either manage themselves or oversee with the help of national conservation authorities.

“Savannah and its contractors have been working only on land which the Company either owns or has been granted permission to enter,” the company said in its emailed statement.

There was a gushing river between the village’s cobblestone street and the dirt road that leads through the communally owned lands where the Savannah workers had begun digging. Fernandes and her fellow anti-mining activists have feared that the mining will cause the underground reservoir to drop, wells to run dry, and any remaining water to become contaminated.

Last year, Savannah revised its initial pitch in regulatory documents to include more water protections. The company said its mine will operate as a “closed system” with “water treatment and sediment removal systems” in place to “ensure water quality on and off site is maintained.” In all, the company said it would tap less than 1% of the area’s groundwater, and that it had committed to daily monitoring for quality and cleanliness.

It also sweetened the deal for Covas do Barroso, according to João Cerejeira, an economist at the University of Minho who analyzed the Savannah project’s impacts.

Savannah said its concession only covers 0.5% of the Barroso agricultural region ― and “guaranteed” it would backfill and rehabilitate each area it mines, “permanently” impacting “less than 0.25%” of the heritage zone. The company abandoned plans to operate 24/7, promised to impose strict time and noise limits on the mining operation, and budgeted to build a new road so its trucks don’t cause traffic. Savannah also pledged annual donations to a local charity, and vowed to fund cultural research and breeding programs for native livestock.

Aurik Antunes, 33, a Portuguese artist and barber living in Covas do Barroso, Portugal, visits a waterfall, one of the natural waterways local opponents of the lithium project fear will be threatened by the mining.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

Such benefits were “not in the other versions” of proposals Savannah put forward, Cerejeira said.

“It’s an opportunity for the region,” Cerejeira said. “The region is losing population year by year. If they don’t have a project that will attract more people, more employment and more families to be living there... in the next decade the municipality will probably disappear. In terms of major services like post offices, schools and banks, you won’t have them because there won’t be enough humans.”

Fernandes and her cohort don’t see it that way. And if they couldn’t stop the mine altogether, their plan was to delay it as much as possible to at least test Savannah investors’ will to keep funding a company without revenues. Locals took turns playing sentinel, parking near the entrance to the communal baldio lands and preparing to summon reinforcements to block any mining trucks driving in to work.

Some days it proved effective, and Fernandes and her friends managed to keep the diesel trucks hauling prospecting equipment from reaching their destination. Other times, as I would later learn, it was a fruitless endeavor — and a distraction from necessary daily farming tasks.

When Fernandes saw the smoke on the horizon, indicating that the workers had begun boring into the bedrock before anyone could spot them, she seemed crestfallen and frustrated.

She drove off the paved street and onto the muddy road that ascends the pine-covered hillsides of the common lands surrounding the village. Roughly 100 feet up, she stopped the truck in front of two young people.

Mariana Riquito, 26, had first come to Covas do Barroso in September 2021 to study the local pushback for her Ph.D. thesis in sociology. Beside her stood Aurik Antunes, 33, a barber and artist who was also drawn here by the conflict, but found it so peaceful they decided to stay and set up a sanctuary retreat for queer people struggling with trauma.

They both hopped in the back of the pickup. Further up the road, we encountered a tall man in a fedora and long cargo shorts walking barefoot in the mud. Originally from Waterbury, Connecticut, Steven Silva Dias, 37, had returned to his parents’ native Portugal and found a sense of belonging in a local chapter of the Rainbow Gathering. The loose-knit, hippie-founded spiritual movement first cropped up in the U.S. in the 1970s to oppose the war in Vietnam. It survives today in the form of regular monthlong encampments where, for a full moon cycle, participants live off the land, bathe naked in streams, and engage in rituals of breathing and physical touch that are meant to erode ego.

Covas do Barroso’s mining conflict had drawn the Rainbow Gathering, which set up its temporary camp of tents and teepees in October. Dias, too, hopped in the back of the truck.

Steven Silva Dias, 37, a member of the Rainbow Gathering spiritual movement, came to Covas do Barroso to take part in a protest and encampment to connect with the region's nature.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

We drove another five minutes before reaching the ridge above where the workers were taking rock samples.

“See what they do?” Dias sneered.

The whole affair felt pretty benign. The workers made noise and cast up dust from machinery, but the operation was confined to a small area. The activists leered from the ridgetop above the work site, but did not approach or confront the crew. There seemed to be an understanding: If opponents blocked the road, the workers wouldn’t push through. But if the prospectors got started before advocates could obstruct their vehicles, no one would try to physically stop them.

Fernandes planned a show of force for the next day, which she organized in a private WhatsApp chat of local activists. She would lead a march of villagers to where Savannah had been taking samples that night, and prevent any more drilling — a demonstration of solidarity ahead of a town meeting where Fernandes hoped her neighbors would vote to pursue legal action against Savannah.

But first, she would make an discomfiting discovery: Her movement had a mole.

‘Come Quick. The Police Are Everywhere.’

My phone rang as I was finishing breakfast the next morning, about an hour before Fernandes’ march was scheduled to begin.

“Come quick. Please,” Fernandes said. “The police are everywhere.”

I drove fast down the twisting roads to Covas do Barroso. Two police SUVs blocked the road at the entrance to the village, but officers eventually got out of the way to let me pass.

About two dozen protesters were gathered at the defunct schoolhouse in the center of the village. We drove to the start of the dirt road going through the common lands, got out, and hiked the rest of the way to where the workers had been the night before.

There were no prospectors. But the police were circling the roads.

The crowd stood in the mud. Some eyed the surrounding ridges with binoculars, trying to spot miners. None appeared. Two Rainbow Gathering members began arguing in English over the ethics of smoking tobacco. A third rolled a cigarette by hand.

“I wonder if someone could explain why we’re here,” said a man wearing a wool poncho and carrying a large skin drum. “My brother says it’s to meet the land.”

Fernandes broke in and began giving a speech describing why her cohort believed a lithium mine would ruin this ancient farming community. She explained that Savannah had won a preliminary permit last May and could receive final approvals by next spring.

A national police vehicle drives past Aida Fernandes' farm on patrol. The police presence has increased as opposition to mining has become more visible.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

“We’re here to demonstrate that we have no fear, and to alert people to what’s going on,” she said.

Another Rainbow Gathering member asked if the lithium was going to Big Pharma. Riquito expounded on how electric cars were driving up demand for the metal, and that digging all that out of the ground here would destroy the local environment, without even adding that much to the global supply.

The poncho’d drummer asked if it was OK to read a message he was carrying from a tribe in Colombia. He read out the famous 1990 statement from the Kogi people to the world, warning humanity of nature’s wrath should industrial development continue apace.

Fernandes left the gathering early to complete some farm work. Her mind was elsewhere.

“Someone alerted the police,” she said. “Someone in the group.”

The police later told me it received a tip about a planned demonstration, and sent reinforcements to maintain “public order and tranquility.” But the National Republican Guard, as the country’s police force is known, acknowledged it had expanded patrols in Covas do Barroso generally as protests picked up over the past year.

The increase in police presence in the village... can be justified by the presence of a climate of tension among the population, who in general were opposed to the entry of the lithium exploration company into the vacant land in the region, a situation which generated a lot of media attention nationally and internationally,” said Ana Isabel Morais, a spokesperson for Portugal’s National Republican Guard.

That night, Fernandes led a town meeting at the village hall. This was what the protest was setting the stage for, a show of force to fellow villagers that momentum was building against the mine. It seemed to work. The majority in attendance voted in favor of opposing the mine, and considered additional litigation to stop it. The vote didn’t translate into any specific legal action, making it mostly symbolic. But when Fernandes came home to find her husband, her daughter and her daughter-in-law sharing cheese, bread and wine by the fire, she was glowing with pride.

From that point on, she said, the village has kept at least one guard at the worksite where the prospectors had been that Friday in November, preventing the company from collecting its equipment or continuing its sampling at that location.

The Other Side

Not everyone was pleased.

Lucillia Mó, 60, was among nearly four dozen people in the village who Savannah says have sold the company a cumulative 100 plots as of last month. She couldn’t recall exactly how much land, or how much money she earned — it was a small parcel far from the village itself — but she said it was a “fair price.”

A protest sign opposing the lithium mine in Boticas, Portugal, reads "Lives yes! Mines no!"

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

She has lived in Covas do Barroso her entire life, and can remember what it used to be like here. The schools were filled with kids. “A lot of people leave this area because there aren’t enough jobs,” Mó said. Her brother, she added, “already said if it goes ahead, he’d like to work in the mine.”

She brushed off concerns about water pollution and trucks, saying she was more concerned about the social isolation she’d felt after not joining the resistance movement.

“They stopped speaking to me,” Mó said. “I’m free to have my own opinion, and I have the right to decide to sell whatever land my parents left me if I need the money, so there’s no need for them to punish me.”

Fernandes said she had no issue with Mó’s decision to sell her land. The problem, she said, was that Mó’s land deal initially included part of the baldio she had no legal right to sell.

“We’re not against the people who sell,” Fernandes said. “We’re against the people who try to steal the baldio land.”

If anyone should be mad, Mó said, it’s villagers like her who never invited all these newcomers into Covas do Barroso.

“There are groups of people who come in. We don’t know who they are or what they do. It’s not that we’re against new people coming. But they were naked,” she said, referring to activists like the Rainbow Gathering group who bathed outside.

“A few months ago, I found two of them in one of my fields picking my chestnuts,” she added. “I asked them, ‘Who sent you here?’ And they couldn’t respond because they don’t speak Portuguese. I don’t like that.”

It’s unclear how many other villagers shared her sentiment. No patron at a crowded village bar and café one afternoon wanted to talk about the mine to an American journalist speaking through a translator, and the vote at the town meeting seemed to indicate widespread opposition.

“She is a very special person,” Fernandes said sarcastically of Mó.

The BBC, Reuters and Euronews had sent reporters to the remote village, and each came back with a similar David-vs.-Goliath narrative about resistance to the mine. A new documentary starring Fernandes premiered last week in France at the Cannes Film Festival.

I reached out to Savannah over a month before I was scheduled to visit Portugal, and the company, through an outside publicity firm, ultimately declined to meet with me during my visit.

I contacted the company again months later, asking if they would introduce me to some villagers who sold the firm their land. After weeks of going back and forth, Savannah arranged phone calls with two.

Cows graze at Aida Fernandes' farm in Covas do Barroso, Portugal.

Alexander C. Kaufman/HuffPost

Maciel Alves sold Savannah 7 acres for 150,000 euros. A granite quarryman by trade, he said he understands the risks of lithium mining and believes the opposition is exaggerating the potential tradeoffs.

“The real risks are if it doesn’t go ahead,” Alves, 43, said by phone in March. “Things will stay the same and nothing will change. Our region will keep getting more and more abandoned.”

The mine, he said, would bring royalty payments and money.

“Everybody works for money, and it comes in handy,” he said.

That’s particularly true as the seasons and land he once counted on become less reliable. Alves remembered the blaze that nearly turned the village to ash.

“The wildfire took everything in Covas,” he said. “The land all burned down. The trees all burned down. My parent’s land, it all got affected.”

The flames couldn’t lick the cash in his checking account, he said.

On my final night in Boticas, after sharing dinner with Antunes, I drove back to the neighboring village where I was staying. The inky blackness of night was overpowering. In New York City, I rarely see that much darkness. I pulled onto the side of the road, parked the car, turned the lights off and got out. The cloudless sky was splattered with stars. I wondered how many generations of gazers had taken in this same view at this exact location. Finally craning my neck downward, I saw a blink of red light. Then another. Another. Along the horizon, on a distant ridgeline, a row of red lights flickering on and off. Wind turbines.

A week later, the Spanish government finalized its plans to shut down the Iberian Peninsula’s last nuclear reactors in the next few years, leaving Portugal, which shares a power grid with its neighbor, with little choice but to build a lot more batteries if the lights are going to stay on when the wind dies down and the sky turns dark. If the speed of deliberate change didn’t hasten, nature would set the pace. That would mean more wildfires, more “smokenados,” and more drought, like the latest one parching Iberia.

With lithium demand soaring year over year in the U.S., China and Europe, how long could this region really keep mining at bay?

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Freedom of Voice: A Newcomer’s Guide to Safe and Effective Protesting

How to participate in causes you believe in — in a manner that will be noticed, respected, and heard. The post Freedom of Voice: A Newcomer’s Guide to Safe and Effective Protesting appeared first on The Revelator.

The “No Kings” protests in June drew an estimated 4-6 million people to more than 2,000 events around the country — making it one of the largest protest turnouts in history. Many attendees interviewed during “No Kings” revealed that they had never attended a protest before. This continues two trends we’ve seen since the Women’s March in 2017: More and more people are protesting, and every event is someone’s first protest. Environmental causes have been a big part of this. The 2019 Global Climate Strike was the largest climate protest to date. And a recent survey found that 1 in 10 people in the United States attended environmental protests between June 2022 and June 2023. But protesting for the planet (or against oppressive government actions) poses risks that newcomers should understand. Protesting itself can be physically demanding. Meanwhile, legislatures around the country (and the world) have taken steps to criminalize protest, and right-wing agitators have increasingly used violence to harm or intimidate protestors. With all of that in mind, The Revelator has launched a multipart series on protest safety, especially geared toward first-timers. After all, it’s going to be a long, hot summer for environmental advocates seeking to make their voices heard in public across America and the globe. Before the Protest Are there meetings, including virtual meetings, from the organizing entity? Attend if you can; they’ll help you to understand the specific protest messaging so everyone is on the same page before the protest. Learn if there’s a check-in process: Will there be signs, T-shirts, hats, or other identifying items to receive while registering or when you show up for this protest? Make sure you sign up for text lists and other communications in case of inclement weather, parking issues, and other last-minute changes for the location and presentation of the protest. Know who to contact and what to do if you run into trouble while protesting. Decide how you’re getting there (in an eco-friendly way, if possible): Find out if public transportation or carpools are available, or organize your own rideshares. What to Bring to a Protest — and What NOT to Bring Plan ahead: Bring the right supplies for a day of protesting. What to Bring: A backpack and belt bag that are durable and not bulky. The belt pack keeps your hands free. Comfortable, quality walking shoes. This is non-negotiable. Wear closed-toe shoes that are broken-in and for walking long distances. Protest signs that clearly display your message in big, bold letters and can be easily read from far away. Make sure your signs are made with sturdy, bright, durable boards, with a comfortable handle. Short messages are better than a block of text. Stay hydrated. Bring a lot of water — which may also prove useful for clearing eyes and face of tear gas and pepper spray. (Milk has been disproven as tear-gas relief.) Lightweight, nutritious, protein-rich snacks: energy bars, nuts, etc. A face mask and safety goggles for smoke and tear gas. These can also hide your identity from cameras and police surveillance. A hat, sunglasses, jacket, umbrella…Clothing should be appropriate for changing weather conditions and can perform double duty as cover for any identifying skin markings. These items can also obscure your face from facial recognition technology. A change of clothes (just in case). Hand sanitizer and wipes. A first-aid kit if the organization does not provide a medical station or personnel that can be easily identified as first aid providers in the crowd. Your ID in case you’re detained. Your phone. (Essential for staying connected, but digital privacy may be a concern. See our resources section below for some guidance.) A power bank to charge devices. Other items might include a cooling towel; flashlight or headlamp; and a lanyard with a list of emergency contacts, medical conditions and medications. Things Not to Bring for a Demonstration: Alcohol or drugs. Spray paint. Firearms, knives, mace, pepper spray, tasers or weapons of any sort, even items that might be construed as weapons (such as a small Swiss army knife, metal eating utensils, etc.). Firecrackers or fireworks or anything explosive. Flammable liquids. Flares and smoke bombs. Torches (flashlights are okay). While You’re at the Protest The late civil rights icon John Lewis said, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble,” encouraging people to challenge the status quo. Do: engage in group activities, meet and greet people. This is a great opportunity to forge friendships behind a greater cause, and for future protests or community organizing. Help those around you. Study your surroundings and people around you. Stay alert and be aware of the people in your group: Is there someone who has joined the demonstration who seems too aggressive and appears to be carrying firearms, weapons, and other tools of violence? If you get triggered and feel overly emotional with what’s happening, take that as your cue to head home. Empirical research shows that the most effective protests are non-violent. Political scientist Omar Wasow saw this in a study of the 1960s U.S. Civil Rights movement, finding that when protesters were violent, it prompted news stories focused on crime and disorder, and lent more sympathy to the opposition, who then become viewed as promoting law and order. In contrast, peaceful demonstrations that are violently repressed by the state make media coverage sympathetic to the protesters and strengthen peaceful movements. Remember that you’re not protesting in a vacuum. Don’t take actions that feed the opposition news media. Your behavior, attire, and reactions to provocative actions by the opposition and the police, National Guard, or military could be recorded by smart phones or the media, especially social media. Assume you’re being watched and that your words are being listened to. Don’t taunt or antagonize the opposition and de-escalate any confrontations that are becoming heated or aggressive. Stay calm and focused. Don’t rise to the bait of police or military force. Don’t throw things at them. Be passive but firm in your presentation. If you are arrested, don’t struggle or fight. Be polite and compliant — and the only word coming from your mouth should be, “lawyer.” Staying calm and respectful can be challenging when participating in a protest demonstration. Emotions run high, especially in the hot summer months. However, being a “peaceful protester” with resolute calm and dignity makes a greater impression on the public, many of whom sit on the fence about current issues and events. These are people who may be getting inaccurate information and have become dismissive of our endeavors as “unserious” activism. Screaming, yelling, and deriding don’t win them over but reinforce their opinion of us as obnoxious troublemakers. Opposition media outlets will cherry-pick video footage of “bad actors” and edit these bits of footage in loops that will play constantly in the media. As a result, your protest message will be ignored over the more inflammatory messaging about your cause. Coming Up: This series will continue with a look at the history of peaceful protesting and tips on how to organize a protest. And we want to hear from you. What questions do you have about protesting? What advice would you share? Send your comments, suggestions, questions, or even brief essays to comments@therevelator.org. Sources and Resources: Summer of Change: New Books to Inspire Environmental Action The Activist Handbook and other sources below provide practical guides and resources so you can plan your demonstration successfully. Indivisible  and No Kings offer training and education on protesting safely and effectively, as well as new and upcoming protest events. The Human Rights Campaign: Tips for Preparedness, Peaceful Protesting, and Safety ACLU Guide: How to Protest Safely and Responsibly Amnesty International Protest Guide Wired: How to Protest Safely: What to Bring, What to Do, and What to Avoid Infosec 101 for Activists “The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists”  by Lisa Mueller “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting”  by Omar Wasow “Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha)”  by M. K. Gandhi Republish this article for free! Read our reprint policy. Previously in The Revelator: Saving America’s National Parks and Forests Means Shaking Off the Rust of Inaction The post Freedom of Voice: A Newcomer’s Guide to Safe and Effective Protesting appeared first on The Revelator.

Summer of Change: New Books to Inspire Environmental Action

America’s summer celebrations are upon us, and these eight books will inspire environmentalists to act for our country and our planet. The post Summer of Change: New Books to Inspire Environmental Action appeared first on The Revelator.

“A patriot…wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where their country can be loved and sustained. The patriot has universal values, standards by which they judge their nation, always wishing it well — and wishing that it would do better.” — Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny It’s the summer season: Barbeques are firing up, the stars and stripes are in view, and people are preparing to make a difference in the second half of the year. As we look to the “patriotic threesome” of holidays celebrated across the United States — Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day — it’s a good time to ask how you’ll show your patriotism for the planet. It’s especially important this year, given the current wave of misappropriation and compromises facing our natural lands and resources. Eight new environmental books might offer you some ideas on how to accomplish that. They offer ideas for getting involved in politics, improving your activism, and making important changes in your homes and communities. We’ve excerpted the books’ official descriptions below and provided links to the publishers’ sites, but you should also be able to find these books in a variety of formats through your local bookstore or library. Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook edited by Nick Mucha, Jessica Flint, and Patrick Thomas The need for activism is more urgent than ever before and the risks are greater, too. Safe and effective activism has always required smart strategic planning, clear goals and creative tactics, and careful and detailed preparation. Without these, activists can end up injured, penalized, or jailed. If anything, these risks are greater today as powerful forces in government and industry resist the big changes needed to slow the climate crisis and keep Earth livable for generations to come. Tools to Save Our Home Planet: A Changemaker’s Guidebook reflects the wisdom and best advice from activists working in today’s volatile world. A go-to resource for driving change, it offers timely and relevant insights for purpose-aligned work. It is intended as a primer for those new to activism and a refresher for seasoned activists wanting to learn from their peers, a reassuring and inspirational companion to the environmental and justice movements that we desperately need as a society. When We’re in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership by Amanda Litman Most leadership books treat millennials and Gen Z like nuisances, focusing on older leadership constructs. Not this one. When We’re in Charge is a no-bullshit guide for the next generation of leaders on how to show up differently, break the cycle of the existing workplace. This book is a vital resource for new leaders trying to figure out how to get stuff done without drama. Offering solutions for today’s challenges, Litman offers arguments for the four-day workweek, why transparency is a powerful tool, and why it matters for you to both provide and take family leave. A necessary read for all who occupy or aspire to leadership roles, this book is a vision for a future where leaders at work are compassionate, genuine, and effective. Scientists on Survival: Personal Stories of Climate Action by Scientists for XR In this important and timely book, scientists from a broad range of disciplines detail their personal responses to climate change and the ecological crises that led them to form Scientists for XR [Extinction Rebellion] and work tirelessly within it. Whether their inspiration comes from education or activism, family ties or the work environment, the scientists writing here record what drives them, what non-violent direct action looks like to them, what led them to become interested in the environmental crisis that threatens us all, and what they see as the future of life on Earth. Public Land and Democracy in America: Understanding Conflict over Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by Julie Brugger Public Land and Democracy in America brings into focus the perspectives of a variety of groups affected by conflict over the monument, including residents of adjacent communities, ranchers, federal land management agency employees, and environmentalists. In the process of following management disputes at the monument over the years, Brugger considers how conceptions of democracy have shaped and been shaped by the regional landscape and by these disputes. Through this ethnographic evidence, Brugger proposes a concept of democracy that encompasses disparate meanings and experiences, embraces conflict, and suggests a crucial role for public lands in transforming antagonism into agonism. The State of Conservation: Rural America and the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920 by Joshua Nygren In the twentieth century, natural resource conservation emerged as a vital force in U.S. politics, laying the groundwork for present-day sustainability. Merging environmental, agricultural, and political history, Nygren examines the political economy and ecology of agricultural conservation through the lens of the “conservation-industrial complex.” This evolving public-private network — which united the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Congress, local and national organizations, and the agricultural industry — guided soil and water conservation in rural America for much of the century. Contrary to the classic tales of U.S. environmental politics and the rise and fall of the New Deal Order, this book emphasizes continuity. Nygren demonstrates how the conservation policies, programs, and partnerships of the 1930s and 1940s persisted through the age of environmentalism, and how their defining traits anticipated those typically associated with late twentieth-century political culture. Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There Is No Future by Slavoj Žižek We hear all the time that we’re moments from doomsday. Around us, crises interlock and escalate, threatening our collective survival: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with its rising risk of nuclear warfare, is taking place against a backdrop of global warming, ecological breakdown, and widespread social and economic unrest. Protestors and politicians repeatedly call for action, but still we continue to drift towards disaster. We need to do something. But what if the only way for us to prevent catastrophe is to assume that it has already happened — to accept that we’re already five minutes past zero hour? Too Late to Awaken sees Slavoj Žižek forge a vital new space for a radical emancipatory politics that could avert our course to self-destruction. He illuminates why the liberal Left has so far failed to offer this alternative, and exposes the insidious propagandism of the fascist Right, which has appropriated and manipulated once-progressive ideas. Pithy, urgent, gutting and witty Žižek’s diagnosis reveals our current geopolitical nightmare in a startling new light, and shows how, in order to change our future, we must first focus on changing the past. How We Sold Our Future: The Failure to Fight Climate Change by Jens Beckert For decades we have known about the dangers of global warming. Nevertheless, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. How can we explain our failure to take the necessary measures to stop climate change? Why are we so reluctant to act? Beckert provides an answer to these questions. Our apparent inability to implement basic measures to combat climate change is due to the nature of power and incentive structures affecting companies, politicians, voters, and consumers. Drawing on social science research, he argues that climate change is an inevitable product of the structures of capitalist modernity which have been developing for the past 500 years. Our institutional and cultural arrangements are operating at the cost of destroying the natural environment and attempts to address global warming are almost inevitably bound to fail. Temperatures will continue to rise, and social and political conflicts will intensify. We are selling our future for the next quarterly figures, the upcoming election results, and today’s pleasure. Any realistic climate policy needs to focus on preparing societies for the consequences of escalating climate change and aim at strengthening social resilience to cope with the increasingly unstable natural world. Parenting in a Climate Crisis: A Handbook for Turning Fear into Action by Bridget Shirvell In this urgent parenting guide, learn how to navigate the uncertainty of the climate crisis and keep your kids informed, accountable, and hopeful — with simple actions you can take as a family to help the earth. Kids today are experiencing the climate crisis firsthand. Camp canceled because of wildfire smoke. Favorite beaches closed due to erosion. Recess held indoors due to extreme heat. How do parents help their children make sense of it all? And how can we keep our kids (and ourselves) from despair? Environmental journalist and parent Bridget Shirvell has created a handbook for parents to help them navigate these questions and more, weaving together expert advice from climate scientists, environmental activists, child psychologists, and parents across the country. She helps parents answer tough questions (how did we get here?) and raise kids who feel connected to and responsible for the natural world, feel motivated to make ecologically sound choices, and feel empowered to meet the challenges of the climate crisis—and to ultimately fight for change. Enjoy these summer reads throughout the holidays and get involved with activities and protests that support our environment and wildlife. Whether it’s changing the way you celebrate to more sustainable fun or joining environmental summer pursuits, we hope you’ll make good trouble this holiday season. For hundreds of additional environmental books — including several on staying calm in challenging times — visit the Revelator Reads archives. Republish this article for free! The post Summer of Change: New Books to Inspire Environmental Action appeared first on The Revelator.

Climate Activist Throws Bright Pink Paint on Glass Covering Picasso Painting in Montreal

The stunt is part of an environmental organization's efforts to draw attention to the dangerous wildfires spreading through Canada

Climate Activist Throws Bright Pink Paint on Glass Covering Picasso Painting in Montreal The stunt is part of an environmental organization’s efforts to draw attention to the dangerous wildfires spreading through Canada The activist threw paint on Pablo Picasso’s L'hétaïre (1901). Last Generation Canada A climate activist threw pink paint at Pablo Picasso’s L’hétaïre (1901) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last week. The 21-year-old man, identified as Marcel, is a member of Last Generation Canada, an environmental organization that works to combat climate change. After splashing Picasso’s portrait with the paint, Marcel made a speech in French to the gallery, which was captured on video and posted on social media by Last Generation Canada. “There are more than 200 wildfires in Canada at this moment, 83 of which are not protected [and] which are out of control,” he said. “There are too many problems here. There are people who are dying. … If Canada doesn’t do much, soon we will all be dying.” Quick fact: Picasso’s blue period Pablo Picasso created L’hétaïre during his famous “blue period,” when the artist painted monochromatic artworks in shades of blue and blue-green. Canada is in the midst of its wildfire season, which occurs between April and October. The blazes have consumed almost nine million acres across four Canadian provinces, report the New York Times’ Nasuna Stuart-Ulin and Vjosa Isai. This season is a particularly bad one. In early June, satellite data revealed that the number of fire hotspots was four times higher than normal, per the Associated Press’ M.K. Wildeman. Marcel’s stunt is part of a three-week “action phase” by Last Generation Canada, according to a statement from the organization. The group is demanding that the Canadian government form a “Climate Disaster Protection Agency” to aid those “whose homes, communities, lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by extreme weather, including wildfires worsened by the burning of fossil fuels.” Picasso’s L’hétaïre, which was on loan from the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, Italy, was covered by a layer of protective glass, and the pink paint caused no visible damage, according to a statement from the museum. Two museum security guards confronted Marcel and turned him over to the Montreal police. Officials tell Hyperallergic’s Maya Pontone that Marcel has been released from custody and will later appear in court. “It is most unfortunate that this act carried out in the name of environmental activism targeted a work belonging to our global cultural heritage and under safekeeping for the benefit of future generations,” Stéphane Aquin, the director of the museum, says in the statement. “Museums and artists alike are allies in the fight for a better world.” In recent years, damaging the glass protecting famous artworks has become a popular method of protest among some climate change groups. However, one of the best-known groups, a British organization called Just Stop Oil, announced in March that it would start winding down such tactics after the United Kingdom decided to stop issuing new oil and gas licenses. “We value paint strokes and color composition over life itself,” Marcel says in the statement from Last Generation Canada. “A lot more resources have been put in place to secure and protect this artwork than to protect living, breathing people.” The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was displaying L’hétaïre as part of the exhibition “Berthe Weill, Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde,” focused on the 20th-century French gallery-owner who exhibited Picasso’s early work. After the June 19 incident, the museum was closed for a short period before reopening later that day. L’hétaïre has not yet returned to the gallery. “I am not attacking art, nor am I destroying it. I am protecting it,” says Marcel in a social media post by Last Generation Canada. “Art, at its core, is depictions of life. It is by the living, for the living. There is no art on a dead planet.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Measles Misinformation Is on the Rise – and Americans Are Hearing It, Survey Finds

Republicans are far more skeptical of vaccines and twice as likely as Democrats to believe the measles shot is worse than the disease.

By Arthur Allen | KFF Health NewsWhile the most serious measles epidemic in a decade has led to the deaths of two children and spread to nearly 30 states with no signs of letting up, beliefs about the safety of the measles vaccine and the threat of the disease are sharply polarized, fed by the anti-vaccine views of the country’s seniormost health official.About two-thirds of Republican-leaning parents are unaware of an uptick in measles cases this year while about two-thirds of Democratic ones knew about it, according to a KFF survey released Wednesday.Republicans are far more skeptical of vaccines and twice as likely (1 in 5) as Democrats (1 in 10) to believe the measles shot is worse than the disease, according to the survey of 1,380 U.S. adults.Some 35% of Republicans answering the survey, which was conducted April 8-15 online and by telephone, said the discredited theory linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism was definitely or probably true – compared with just 10% of Democrats.Get Midday Must-Reads in Your InboxFive essential stories, expertly curated, to keep you informed on your lunch break.Sign up to receive the latest updates from U.S. News & World Report and our trusted partners and sponsors. By clicking submit, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy.The trends are roughly the same as KFF reported in a June 2023 survey. But in the new poll, 3 in 10 parents erroneously believed that vitamin A can prevent measles infections, a theory Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought into play since taking office during the measles outbreak.“The most alarming thing about the survey is that we’re seeing an uptick in the share of people who have heard these claims,” said co-author Ashley Kirzinger, associate director of KFF’s Public Opinion and Survey Research Program. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.“It’s not that more people are believing the autism theory, but more and more people are hearing about it,” Kirzinger said. Since doubts about vaccine safety directly reduce parents’ vaccination of their children, “that shows how important it is for actual information to be part of the media landscape,” she said.“This is what one would expect when people are confused by conflicting messages coming from people in positions of authority,” said Kelly Moore, president and CEO of Immunize.org, a vaccination advocacy group.Numerous scientific studies have established no link between any vaccine and autism. But Kennedy has ordered HHS to undertake an investigation of possible environmental contributors to autism, promising to have “some of the answers” behind an increase in the incidence of the condition by September.The deepening Republican skepticism toward vaccines makes it hard for accurate information to break through in many parts of the nation, said Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer at The Immunization Partnership, in Houston.Lakshmanan on April 23 was to present a paper on countering anti-vaccine activism to the World Vaccine Congress in Washington. It was based on a survey that found that in the Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma state assemblies, lawmakers with medical professions were among those least likely to support public health measures.“There is a political layer that influences these lawmakers,” she said. When lawmakers invite vaccine opponents to testify at legislative hearings, for example, it feeds a deluge of misinformation that is difficult to counter, she said.Eric Ball, a pediatrician in Ladera Ranch, California, which was hit by a 2014-15 measles outbreak that started in Disneyland, said fear of measles and tighter California state restrictions on vaccine exemptions had staved off new infections in his Orange County community.“The biggest downside of measles vaccines is that they work really well. Everyone gets vaccinated, no one gets measles, everyone forgets about measles,” he said. “But when it comes back, they realize there are kids getting really sick and potentially dying in my community, and everyone says, ‘Holy crap; we better vaccinate!’”Ball treated three very sick children with measles in 2015. Afterward his practice stopped seeing unvaccinated patients. “We had had babies exposed in our waiting room,” he said. “We had disease spreading in our office, which was not cool.”Although two otherwise healthy young girls died of measles during the Texas outbreak, “people still aren’t scared of the disease,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which has seen a few cases.But the deaths “have created more angst, based on the number of calls I’m getting from parents trying to vaccinate their 4-month-old and 6-month-old babies,” Offit said. Children generally get their first measles shot at age 1, because it tends not to produce full immunity if given at a younger age.KFF Health News’ Jackie Fortiér contributed to this report.This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF. It was originally published on April 23, 2025, and has been republished with permission.

Suggested Viewing

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.