EXTRACTIVISM, GREEN AND BROWN
- Introduction
- What is extractivism?
- Green and Brown mining
- The security-sustainability nexus
- Green capitalism
- History of geoeconomics
- Ecomodernism vs degrowth
- Trump's energy emergency
- Insecurity and unsustainability under Trump 2.0
- Critical mineral deals from Ukraine to Rwanda
- From opportunistic greening to fossil fascism
- EXTRACTIVISM, GREEN AND BROWN - full version
Introduction
Prolog
In January 2025, Donald Trump began his second term in office by declaring an “energy emergency.” Behind this dramatic gesture lies a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, the order of the day is “drill, baby drill” : the new plan involves a massive relaunch of fossil fuel production, the doubling of liquefied natural gas exports, and the dismantling of policies supporting electric vehicles. But on the other hand, the Republican administration is intent on securing U.S. access to the critical minerals upon which the global energy transition depends. Even before trade tensions with Beijing escalated, Trump had made public his ambition to overtake China as the world’s leading producer of lithium.
Should this new course be understood as a break with the orientation of the previous administration? In some respects, yes: Joe Biden did project the image of a green industrial turn through large-scale investment in renewable infrastructure. Yet he also issued a record number of oil and gas extraction permits.What truly distinguishes Donald Trump from his predecessor, therefore, is the emphatic disregard for any ecological pretense in his administration’s twofold claim on old and new energy sources.
To make sense of the transformations and stakes involved in the energy strategies pursued not only by states, but also by corporations and social movements, Thea Riofrancos explores the interlinkages between geoeconomics, extractive endeavors, and climate policy. A political scientist, environmental activist, and researcher at the Climate and Community Project, she has been tracking the evolution of extractivism for over a decade. Her forthcoming book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, extends a research project that began in Latin America. What she focuses on is the relocation of extractive industries to the Global North, driven by the imperatives of decarbonization.
For Riofrancos, extractivism is not merely a localized operation of resource removal; it constitutes an enduring political and economic regime, historically shaped by unequal exchange between industrial centers and exporting peripheries, as well as by the systematic externalization of social and environmental costs. Thus, the concept of green extractivism does not denote a rupture, but a mutation of the extractive regime. It encompasses both the intensification of mining driven by low-carbon technologies and infrastructures, and the environmental alibi invoked by extractive industries—regardless of the end use of the resources extracted.
What Riofrancos calls the security–sustainability nexus designates the growing fusion of climate objectives, industrial imperatives, and geopolitical rationales. It signals a new phase of green capitalism in which the failure of market-based mechanisms prompts states to support private investment—through guarantees, subsidies, and incentives for domestic reindustrialization. Riofrancos sets out to analyze the various tensions that emerge within this new geography of decarbonization: inter-state rivalries, competing priorities between national security and the demands of financial capital, and internal conflicts between the fossil and renewable energy fractions of industrial capital.
She also seeks to illuminate the current geoeconomic configuration in light of four major historical inflection points: the energy crisis of the 1970s, marked by the simultaneous rise of resource nationalism in the Global South and energy security discourse in the Global North; the commodity boom and the rise of China following the 2008 financial crisis; the protectionist turn inaugurated by Trump’s first presidency in 2016; and, finally, the green industrialism of the Biden administration.
Our conversation with Thea Riofrancos addressed the two sides of her work: we invited the political scientist to reflect on the long arc of her research, but also asked the activist to revisit her contribution to the 2023 report entitled More Mobility, Less Mining in order to reflect on the various strategies deployed to resist extractivism—whether brown or green.
The interview took place in New York on March 14, 2025.
Prolog
In January 2025, Donald Trump began his second term in office by declaring an “energy emergency.” Behind this dramatic gesture lies a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, the order of the day is “drill, baby drill” : the new plan involves a massive relaunch of fossil fuel production, the doubling of liquefied natural gas exports, and the dismantling of policies supporting electric vehicles. But on the other hand, the Republican administration is intent on securing U.S. access to the critical minerals upon which the global energy transition depends. Even before trade tensions with Beijing escalated, Trump had made public his ambition to overtake China as the world’s leading producer of lithium.
Should this new course be understood as a break with the orientation of the previous administration? In some respects, yes: Joe Biden did project the image of a green industrial turn through large-scale investment in renewable infrastructure. Yet he also issued a record number of oil and gas extraction permits.What truly distinguishes Donald Trump from his predecessor, therefore, is the emphatic disregard for any ecological pretense in his administration’s twofold claim on old and new energy sources.
To make sense of the transformations and stakes involved in the energy strategies pursued not only by states, but also by corporations and social movements, Thea Riofrancos explores the interlinkages between geoeconomics, extractive endeavors, and climate policy. A political scientist, environmental activist, and researcher at the Climate and Community Project, she has been tracking the evolution of extractivism for over a decade. Her forthcoming book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, extends a research project that began in Latin America. What she focuses on is the relocation of extractive industries to the Global North, driven by the imperatives of decarbonization.
For Riofrancos, extractivism is not merely a localized operation of resource removal; it constitutes an enduring political and economic regime, historically shaped by unequal exchange between industrial centers and exporting peripheries, as well as by the systematic externalization of social and environmental costs. Thus, the concept of green extractivism does not denote a rupture, but a mutation of the extractive regime. It encompasses both the intensification of mining driven by low-carbon technologies and infrastructures, and the environmental alibi invoked by extractive industries—regardless of the end use of the resources extracted.
What Riofrancos calls the security–sustainability nexus designates the growing fusion of climate objectives, industrial imperatives, and geopolitical rationales. It signals a new phase of green capitalism in which the failure of market-based mechanisms prompts states to support private investment—through guarantees, subsidies, and incentives for domestic reindustrialization. Riofrancos sets out to analyze the various tensions that emerge within this new geography of decarbonization: inter-state rivalries, competing priorities between national security and the demands of financial capital, and internal conflicts between the fossil and renewable energy fractions of industrial capital.
She also seeks to illuminate the current geoeconomic configuration in light of four major historical inflection points: the energy crisis of the 1970s, marked by the simultaneous rise of resource nationalism in the Global South and energy security discourse in the Global North; the commodity boom and the rise of China following the 2008 financial crisis; the protectionist turn inaugurated by Trump’s first presidency in 2016; and, finally, the green industrialism of the Biden administration.
Our conversation with Thea Riofrancos addressed the two sides of her work: we invited the political scientist to reflect on the long arc of her research, but also asked the activist to revisit her contribution to the 2023 report entitled More Mobility, Less Mining in order to reflect on the various strategies deployed to resist extractivism—whether brown or green.
The interview took place in New York on March 14, 2025.
BIOGRAPHY of THEA RIOFRANCOS
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.
BIOGRAPHY of THEA RIOFRANCOS
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.