#24 Will Falk

- Defending Thacker Pass and the Ecological Price of Electric Vehicles

On this episode of “Death in The Garden”, we interview biophilic author and attorney, Will Falk. Will began his career as a public defender and eventually transitioned to environmental law and activism, participating direct action encampments at the Wet’suwet’en Nation in Canada and Mauna Kea, protecting the sacred lands from pipelines and a telescope respectively. Recently, Will has been working with the People of Red Mountain, the coalition of indigenous peoples from the Duck Valley and Fort McDermitt reservations, to fight against the lithium claims in Thacker Pass, or Peehee Mu’huh, “Rotten Moon”, which is a massacre site of Paiute peoples. In this episode, Will explains the details of his case against Lithium Nevada and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the ecological and cultural devastation that will occur if this mine is given clearance to be created, the challenges of being attacked by both environmentalists and capitalists, the importance of direct action, the problem of civilization, a phenomenon called “shifting baseline syndrome”, and we end by discussing the true costs of defending the Earth, and the price we may have to be willing to pay.

Find Will on Twitter, Instagram, and at his website. Read his book, How Dams Fall. And please, if you can, support the efforts at Thacker Pass.

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Editing: Parker Burningham

Intro music: Daniel Osterstock

Outro music: “Lampshades on Fire” by Modest Mouse