On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, Professor Thea Riofrancos discusses her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. Riofrancos traces the history of global extraction and examines how mining harms landscapes, provokes protest, takes center stage in national politics, and links countries on the peripheries of the world economy to huge corporations, commodity markets, and powerful investors.
Green solutions like electric cars come at a cost. She asks: Is it possible to save the world by harming it in the process?
She writes: "Extraction is the material foundation of a zero-carbon world. And that is a key reason that “green capitalism” can read like an oxymoron. How can capitalism ever be green if even the technologies and infrastructures needed to harness renewable energy require digging several hundred new large-scale mines in the span of a decade? Green capitalism does not mean that capitalism is becoming ecologically sustainable. Instead, it refers to the emergence of new economic sectors and supply chains labeled as “green” because of their role—proven or unproven—in addressing the climate crisis, whether by decarbonization or adaptation. It likewise refers to a worldview. Promoters of green capitalism see profit-maximizing firms and business-friendly governments as the main protagonists in the drama of the energy transition—and assert that market-driven innovation can save the planet, without major changes in how our economy works."
Guest:
Thea Riofrancos, political science professor at Providence College, strategic co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, and author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism
Resources:
The New York Review of Books: What’s Underground
Dialogue Earth: The Global South is caught between powers trying to get their resources’
Mongabay: Lithium mining leaves severe impacts in Chile, but new methods exist: Report
The Guardian: The ‘sacrifice zone’: villagers resist the EU’s green push for lithium mining
