Lithium, a crucial input in the batteries powering electric vehicles, has the potential to save the world from climate change. But even green solutions come at a cost. Mining lithium is environmentally destructive. We therefore confront a dilemma: Is it possible to save the world by harming it in the process?
Having spent over a decade researching mining and oil sectors in Latin America, Thea Riofrancos is a leading voice on resource extraction. In Extraction, she draws on groundbreaking fieldwork on the global race for lithium. Taking readers from the breathtaking salt flats of Chile’s Atacama Desert, to Nevada’s glorious Silver Peak Range, to the rolling hills of the Barroso Region of Portugal, she reveals the social and environmental costs of “critical minerals.” In Washington, DC, and Brussels, she tracks the escalating geopolitics of green technology supply chains. And she takes stock of new policy paradigms in the Global South, where governments seek to leverage mineral assets to jumpstart green development. In the process, Riofrancos uncovers surprising links across history, from colonial conquest to the 1970s energy crisis, to our still uncertain green future.
While unregulated mining could inflict irreversible harm, Riofrancos offers optimistic proposals to transform the governance of mining while also reducing the sheer volume of global extraction. A rigorous and hopeful call to action, Extraction shares how we can harmonize climate goals with social justice–and set the planet on a course to ecological flourishing.
Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Previously, she has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard, and a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at Notre Dame, as well as holding research positions at institutions in Santiago, Chile and Quito, Ecuador. The author of Resource Radicals and coauthor of A Planet to Win, her articles have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Cultural Studies, World Politics, and Global Environmental Politics, and her essays in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, n+1, and Jacobin, among other outlets.
Riofrancos will be in conversation with Dharna Noor. Noor is the fossil fuels and climate reporter at the Guardian US. Before joining the Guardian, she helped launch the Boston Globe’s climate team as a writer and producer. Previously, she was a staff writer at Earther, Gizmodo’s climate vertical, where she also co-produced a season of the podcast Drilled on the fossil fuel industry’s influence on education. Dharna began her career in media at the Real News Network, where she launched and led the climate team. Her multimedia reporting has also appeared in various publications and was also featured in the 2021 book The World We Need and the intro for the 2022 book Future on Fire. She has been interviewed on an array of shows such as PBS News Hour, Democracy Now, and NPR’s Living on Earth. She lives in Baltimore.
This event is free with first come, first serve seating.
At Politics & Prose at the Wharf, 610 Water St SW, Washington DC
Politics & Prose
District of Columbia
10/10/2025 at 07:00PM