Thea Riofrancos: Confronting Contradiction and Working for the Planet

I am delighted to talk with scholar, journalist, and activist Thea Riofrancos about her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.  She takes us deep into the mining of lithium and the production of lithium batteries, which have been welcomed as a key element in our transition from fossil fuels.  Traveling widely through Latin America to see lithium extraction at work, Thea brings us stories of how this industry has disrupted lives, changed local and national economies, and devastated the environment. On the other hand, she gives us an unflinching glimpse into the alternatives. The book wrestles with these and other issues, tracing the contradictions of things like on-shoring back to the 1970s. While not arriving at an unproblematic “solution” to extraction, Thea nonetheless outlines a critical set of best practices and imaginative alternatives to the bleak offerings of capitalism, green or not.

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. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as in media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, n+1, Dissent, and more.