Why We Are Erasing a Beautiful Desert in Chile to Save the Planet - Bright Side Next
Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest and most fragile ecosystems on Earth, is currently being drained dry to fuel the booming global demand for smartphones and electric vehicles. Mining companies are aggressively pumping millions of liters of ancient underground brine into massive, neon-blue evaporation ponds that are literally visible from space. Extracting just a single ton of this highly prized "white gold" requires evaporating a staggering 500,000 gallons of the desert's only groundwater. This relentless water consumption is rapidly shrinking beautiful blue lagoons, devastating local…
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