The New Age of Extraction w/ Thea Riofrancos
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of the green energy transition and its potential to replicate extractive dynamics of the fossil-fuel era.
Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters Welcome back to the After Order podcast - a series from Macrodose in collaboration with the Alameda Institute . In our opening episode, host James Meadway spoke with Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff about their book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, using Elon Musk as a lens to examine the intellectual contours of our emerging post-liberal moment. Together, they traced how new ideological formations may be taking shape in the aftermath of neoliberalism. In today’s episode, we shift from those ideological roots to something more tangible, the material foundations of contemporary capitalism, and in particular, the accelerating green energy transition. To explore this, James is joined by Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. As governments and corporations race to decarbonise the global economy, demand for critical minerals such as lithium has surged dramatically. Yet as Thea’s work shows, this transition is not simply a story of technological progress or environmental necessity. It is also opening up new frontiers of extraction - reshaping landscapes, transforming communities, and…
People in this episode
Host: James Meadway
Guest: Thea Riofrancos
Topics covered
- green energy transition
- extraction
- capitalism
- neoliberalism
- geopolitical relations
Keywords
- green capitalism
- critical minerals
- lithium
- decarbonise
- environmental necessity
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism
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