Episode Details

In 2019, mines expelled 100 billion tonnes of solid waste.

Vast and destructive almost beyond imagination, mining is nevertheless essential to the green transition: without the minerals that we pull from the Earth, we cannot wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

Thea Riofrancos is associate professor of political science at Providence College and an expert on the politics of resource extraction, green energy transition, the global lithium sector and the Latin American left.

She tells Eleanor Penny about the contradictions that mining throws up for the left, how our mining operations have already started terraforming the Earth, and the surprisingly radical history of Opec.

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