Critical Conversations is a series dedicated to exploring feminist, decolonial, and grassroots perspectives on just transition — perspectives that are frequently absent from mainstream climate and energy debates. Through these dialogues, we aim to connect lived experience and critical analysis to policy conversations, fostering space for reflection and collective sense-making.

Thea brings particular expertise on the Atacama Desert in Chile, situating her analysis within both regional and global contexts of extraction, justice, and transformation. Her new book, “Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism,” investigates the environmental and social costs of the so-called green transition, and asks what genuine justice requires as the world shifts to new energy systems.

We spoke to Thea just after returning from COP30 in Brazil, where the geopolitics of the energy transition and critical minerals were more prominent in the negotiations than we’ve ever seen before. Although this did not yield concrete outcomes or decisions on minerals, it is indicative of the increasing attention countries are paying to the question of minerals in the context of the energy transition.

Our conversation with Thea explores the specifics of lithium, a mineral often referenced in critical minerals conversations — what it’s used for and what that use means — as well as her take on how the politics around energy and extraction have changed in recent years.  

The transcribed interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

WEDO: Tell us about lithium —  what is that mineral? What role does it play right now? What role will it play in the energy transition?

Thea: I think that it's interesting and important that so many governments and civil society representatives at COP were having the conversation about so-called “critical minerals,” even if it didn't land in the final text. There are many reasons for the growing interest in these minerals, both in the Global South and the Global North.

Critical minerals, as defined by governments like the U.S. and the European Union as minerals essential to the economy and national security, include, within that, energy transition minerals, which are a subset. Those are minerals that tick those boxes but are specifically relevant to the energy transition because they're inputs into technologies like solar panels or lithium batteries. Lithium kind of falls into that category.

Lithium is currently the most important ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, which are the prevailing approach we’re taking — “we,” broadly construed — to decarbonize the transportation sector and, secondarily, the energy sector.

The transportation sector in the U.S. is the number one source of our carbon emissions. Globally, it's the second-largest source of carbon emissions. So it's a very urgent sector to decarbonize. But fortunately, unlike some other sectors, we have technological tools to do that, especially for ground transportation. In the energy sector, when we talk about a renewable energy transition, we're primarily referring to the mass deployment of solar and wind.

The thing about solar and wind is that they're variable seasonally and even diurnally. At a given moment, the sun is shining. At night, not so much. There might be seasons that are windier than others. We need storage mechanisms. And lithium-ion batteries on energy grids are really useful for short-term storage, so that when the sun is shining the most, we can capture that. And then maybe later in the evening, when everyone's coming home, turning on the washing machine, plugging in their electric vehicle, watching some Netflix, whatever they're doing, that's when we get a lot of peak energy demand. We have the batteries that store that energy and can deliver it to households, businesses, or wherever it is needed.

That's the role of lithium. That's why it's center stage in both governmental and corporate approaches to thinking through the energy transition writ large, and specifically the material supply chains necessary to furnish these end-use so-called “green” or “clean” technologies. There are inequalities in who's impacted, and relationships we can call unjust or unequal in how harms and benefits are distributed.

Lithium is no exception to that. We definitely see that frontline communities impacted by lithium projects tend to be relatively marginalized and neglected by the state in terms of basic public and social infrastructure. Yet they are being inundated by the impacts of mining. In many cases, these areas are relatively ungoverned, meaning there are no effective governance mechanisms in place to monitor, protect, and enforce rights. The communities paying the price for these “green” technologies are precisely the ones that may not be seeing their benefits.

WEDO: Turning to your research on the Atacama Desert, many see it as a striking yet harsh landscape. In your book, you note that colonial narratives often portray the Atacama as empty, justifying its use for resource extraction. Yet you highlight its rich, complex, and unique ecosystems. What makes the salt flat distinctive? Who and what flora and fauna live there, and what mining processes are occurring in this region?

Thea: For context, the top global lithium producers are: first, Australia; then Chile; then China, though it mainly uses that lithium domestically rather than exporting it; and then Argentina, though other countries are being added into the mix. 

But Chile has this important role. It supplies about a fifth of global lithium. All that lithium currently comes from two mega mines on the Atacama salt flat. The Atacama salt flat is a crusty, salty expanse like salt flats around the world. The Atacama salt flat is Chile's largest of many dozens and the third-largest in the world. So it's extremely large.

It is a remarkable, stunning, unforgettable environment. It is unusually arid, it has unusually high solar radiation, and it is unusually variable in terms of temperature. It's an extreme environment in all of these ways, which has led to perceptions that it is empty of life because how could anyone survive there? But it is extremely scientifically important to understand the multiplicity and diversity of life forms that, despite or maybe through the extremity of the environment, have found a way not just to survive but actually have thriving, really interesting ecosystems.

And the human communities in this case are communities that have lived there for many millennia, that are Indigenous to the area, and live around the salt flat. Around the perimeter of the salt flat, there are freshwater resources. We see all sorts of ways that there is a kind of web of life, in which human and non-human life interact with this really unique environment and are directly affected by climate change-driven drought and by environmental changes, especially those wrought by the copper and lithium sectors in the area.

WEDO: How do we see extractive imperialism continue through capitalism today, and how it is that territories in the global South have ended up, not by coincidence or accident, as sites of extraction and dispossession?

Thea: We see a few things over the past 500-600 years of capitalist development globally. One is that particular places on Earth were colonized, whether in the early stages of colonialism (1500, 1600, 1700, etc.) or later, during the height of imperialism. But really, it was the early to mid-20th century when we had the most countries and parts of Earth under either direct European control, colonial domination, or, in some cases, direct or indirect forms of American imperialism.

In 1945, at the critical moment in history when the war ended and the UN was established, around two-thirds of the world’s population was living under colonial domination. In the decades that followed, major decolonization movements fundamentally changed that reality. I think it's important to know how recent it is so that we can understand that these legacies are not ancient history.

The combination of long duration and relatively recent decolonization, in many cases across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, makes us aware that these are really durable structures. And they are also at the foundation of our contemporary global economy and are reproduced in all sorts of ways outside of the structures of formal colonialism. Places on Earth that were originally colonized, places that had pre-existing cultures and civilizations that were brutalized and violently conquered in this process, were relegated to a specific role in the global economy, which is fundamentally to provide the raw materials that make capitalism possible.

Chile was colonized during the era of Spanish colonialism and then liberated itself along with other Latin American countries in the early 19th century, after a few hundred years of colonialism. When Chile was formally liberated from Spain, Chile’s existing status as a mine for the global economy was cemented, reinforced, and exacerbated. So the Spanish colonists were kicked out, but the British and American capitalists entered soon after.

With a goal of “development,” the early Chilean state worked with these foreign powers and the investment it hoped to attract to survey Chilean land to figure out where resource deposits were and build the infrastructure these foreign companies would use to export to the global economy. We can look at the global or national level and see these long arcs of history reproduce themselves.

The kind of large-scale studies that look at inequality in the global economy show how unfortunately durable it is. And what I mean by that is the Global South — countries that, in almost all cases, were former colonies of European or American powers and have since decolonized — are net providers. They provide more raw materials, embodied labor, land, and energy to the global economy than they get. They’re net losers in terms of any of the monetary or economic benefits. So we still have this fundamental inequality at the heart of our world system, and energy transition supply chains recapitulate that in large part. The places where the minerals are coming from are not the same places where value-added parts of the supply chain are, which generate more profit, higher-skilled labor, greater technological development, et cetera.

WEDO: What are the most significant shifts that you've seen in the geopolitics of mining, whether that’s the last few years or the last decade? What are the things that advocates, activists, or folks who are thinking about just transition and want to have equity at the center of their analysis need to be paying better attention to? What might be flying under the radar?

Thea: I like that you ask across multiple timeframes, because there are some shifts in this world that date back a couple of decades, and others that are so recent they’re like breaking news.

The longer-term change we see is a lessening tolerance on the part of local or affected communities for large-scale mining projects with major impacts and minor local economic benefits —  Latin America is super relevant here. Mining can create irreversible forms of landscape change. You are digging a huge pit into the ground; whatever ecosystems, water systems, and social life previously existed in that same land footprint might be upended, dispossessed, and severely impacted in ways that are hard to undo even with remediation later. The environmental impacts are really severe, and the economic benefits can be really paltry, especially in relative terms. We’re seeing less tolerance at the local level for mining impacts without compensation. We’re seeing more anti-extractive activism and more creative forms of activism to say no to projects or to demand much more rigorous forms of economic benefits from them.

But what's also changing the political economy is that Global North governments really want more of these projects locally. On the activist front, it is opening up the possibility of coordination and shared grievances, visions, and demands across the North and South. What we see is Global North communities, often also marginalized and rural, are facing these mining projects and are connecting with Global South communities. And we see this transnational activism — though we shouldn’t equate it in a simplistic way because Global South communities face more mining projects and also face more forms of state and corporate violence than Global North communities do. The other grievances around environmental impact, exclusion from governance, and lack of economic benefit are pretty similar in the North and the South.

As Global North governments push for more of these projects, we see transnational coalitions forming, which is really interesting. That introduces new dynamism into these supply chains as movements and communities grapple with this in the Global North, as we're kind of thinking about this closer to home, but also seeing the ways that they basically reproduce inequalities within the Global North around who’s subjected to this and who isn’t. But they certainly change the nature of the global conversation.

The third development is Global South governments and societies thinking through what public policy tools are available to us to guard against this being green colonialism or green sacrifice zones. Instead, they want to protect our environments from the worst harms of mining while also thinking through the economic development possibilities in these supply chains and how we can move out of the trap of being at the extractive node versus having the more high-value-added and technologically innovative parts of the supply chain. Most importantly, rather than having green technologies hoarded by the wealthiest, ensuring that there's access to these planet-saving technologies and that end-use technologies are more equitably distributed.

WEDO: You and folks at Climate Community Institute have been centering this notion of “supply chain solidarity” — thinking through how sites of extraction and the sites of processing, trade, and use are all points of connection where activists can learn from each other and make choices that improve the lives of everyone along that supply chain. What are the Solidarity Principles for the Transportation Supply Chain and the Energy Transition? What do they aim to do, and what hopes do you have for where they go next?  

Thea: What we found is that there is absolutely a way to transition to fully zero emissions transportation sectors without as much mining as the conventional forecasts say is “necessary.” That doesn’t absolve us. I want to say this right away, because this is where it remains tricky for progressives, for leftists, for like justice-oriented people. It doesn't result in zero mining in the near term, which is why we need questions about how we are going to govern mining, distribute the economic benefits of mining more equitably, and rigorously enforce rights so that no land defender is ever killed for engaging in nonviolent resistance. 

We still have to think about those questions because even in a perfect utopian society with dramatically less resource use and way more equitable distribution, we are still in a systems transition. We need to build out this new system that's going to have some material impacts, whether it's some degree of lithium mining for electric buses, some degree of rare earth mining for community-owned solar, whatever our perfect version of what the end use is or what the kind of social system we want to build is, we need to think that our plans have material implications.

It is actually faster for climate action and emissions reduction purposes to get people out of cars and onto mass transit, to build more walkable, dense, and equitable communities, and to recycle batteries instead of new mining. All of this brings a ton of co-benefits: social, ecological, and climate. What I learned from all of this is that we need to use technology, quantitative empirical models of resource use, of emissions reductions, of all these types of models, and frame them within the type of society we want to make. How much material would that take, and in what timeframe could we do it? How equitably and democratically could we govern it? And not leave the numbers, models, and data to the mainstream entities that have their own particular vision of what the energy transition should look like.

We shouldn’t leave those tools on the table. We should incorporate them into our policy visions and into our organizing as much as possible. It makes us more rigorous and honest among ourselves about the intense material realities and what certain policy visions might require in terms of energy systems and mining, and also gives us sharper arguments against an extractivist status quo.