Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism
W.W. Norton, September 2025 / Preorder here
Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism is an in-depth analysis into the growing industry of green technologies and the environmental, social, and political consequences of the mining it requires.
In the fight against climate change, lithium's role in reducing emissions by powering green economies is a mixed blessing. Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork in Chile, Nevada, and Portugal, Riofrancos explores the environmental and social costs of the global race to expand lithium mining amid supply chain concerns. With haunting descriptions of vulnerable ecosystems, she 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. Riofrancos traces the history of global extraction from colonial conquest, to the 1970s energy crisis, to the still uncertain green future.
While an unregulated mining boom could inflict irreversible harm, Riofrancos offers compelling ideas about how to harmonize climate action with social justice. Across the world’s extractive frontiers, we encounter the most brutal aspects of capitalism—but also witness inspiring visions for our planetary future.
ADVANCED PRAISE
Dazzling in the bold questions it asks and its beautifully, compellingly written answers, Extraction reminds us that the transition to an economy free from fossil fuels still allows for the endurance of extractivism. To disrupt these rapacious continuities, we need Riofrancos's rigorous research, searching interrogation, and honest reflection. An immense contribution.
Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything
Honest, clear-eyed, and meticulously tracing every link in the global supply chain, Thea Riofrancos has written an essential book on extraction, critical minerals, and green capitalism. Extraction is a book for our moment, an antidote to naivety and ignorance but not to hope.
Adam Tooze, author of Crashed
An unflinching journey into the gritty details of the burgeoning green economy — rigorous and fun to read. You'll never look at an electric car the same way.
Malcom Harris, author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World
Thea Riofrancos’ Extraction is indispensable, deeply researched, compellingly argued, and beautifully written. Not just an exposé of exploitation but an inspiration, pointing the way to what a truly just sustainable global economy could look like.
Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The End of the Myth
In the 21st century, the effort to decarbonize the global energy system has become urgent. In clear and page-turning prose, Thea Riofrancos brings to life the rush for lithium and other minerals crucial to batteries, windmills, and solar panels and what it means for the many lands and peoples caught up in this historic transformation.
J. R. McNeill, author of The Human Web and The Great Acceleration
An urgent wake-up call, Extraction is a journey through the contradictions of a green transition that relies on environmentally harmful mining that reproduces old inequalities along new supply chains. But it is also a hopeful, beautifully written book full of visions for alternatives, necessary reading for all in search of paths to a more just and truly sustainable future.
Isabella M. Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy
With a steadfast commitment to justice in our environmental century, Riofrancos’s incisive work seeks answers in commandeered mountains and salt flats, the closed-door labs and boardrooms where truth is buried and profits are mined, and the distant homes of those who endure the consequences—and rise in resistance. At its core, this book delivers a powerful message: stop whitewashing the green economy.
Jack E. Davis, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Gulf