Extracting the Future: Lithium in an Era of Energy TransitionBolivia's troubled efforts to develop a commercial lithium industry. Bolivia's lithium accounts for a significant percentage of the world's known reserve. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research, Mark Goodale traces the development of Bolivia's closely guarded lithium project through the perspectives of a wide array of people and institutions, including workers at the Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat; the state lithium company in La Paz; Latin America's first electric vehicle company; and energy entrepreneurs in Bolivia, the United States, and Germany. He points to a fundamental contradiction: a so-called green energy transition dependent on the ever-greater extraction of yet another nonrenewable resource. But without access to Bolivia's lithium, and at megaindustrial scales that far outstrip current production, there won't be sufficient lithium supply to make the batteries needed for a truly global EV revolution. Extracting the Future shows how the lithium economy is deeply embedded in a global capitalist system that continues to rely on resource extraction, unsustainable economic growth, and geopolitical violence. |
Contents
Locating Lithium I | 1 |
Marc Ngui | 20 |
Tracing the Prelives of Lithium | 25 |
Advertisement from the Lithium Corporation of America 1957 | 26 |
Bolivia Will Not Be a Hacienda for the Gringos La Paz Teachers | 41 |
First page of the press release announcing the launch of the EROS | 49 |
The Fuel That Will Power the World | 60 |
View from an industrial building on the Salar de Uyuni 2019 | 61 |
Electric Ambitions Made in Cocha | 160 |
Yes I Am Electric Cochabamba 2022 | 161 |
Metalins electric mining wagon Cochabamba 2022 | 169 |
Quantum factory Cochabamba 2022 | 176 |
Quantum workers apply paint to an EV 2022 | 177 |
Workers assemble an EV at the Quantum factory 2022 | 178 |
Handmade wiring diagram Quantum factory 2022 | 179 |
Proud Quantum owner poses with her EV Cochabamba 2023 | 183 |
Chinese building contractor claims it will create a more prosperous | 76 |
Flexible Extractivism and Historical Reckoning | 94 |
Construction underway at the Salar de Uyuni 2020 | 96 |
Exploring the enigmas of the Salar with an YLB geologist 2019 | 105 |
5 | 129 |
Rusting ruins of a former COMIBOL tin smelter La Palca 2022 | 139 |
Calculations and figures YLB battery facility La Palca 2022 | 148 |
Lithiumion batteries assembled for rural solar systems | 156 |
Green Energy Renegades and Lithium Futures | 192 |
Small office complex in northeast Austin 2022 | 201 |
Live Laugh Lithium EnergyX offices Austin 2022 | 208 |
Thinking through Brine | 224 |
A large evaporation pond on the Salar de Uyuni | 225 |
Acknowledgments | 237 |
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Extracting the Future: Lithium in an Era of Energy Transition Mark Goodale No preview available - 2025 |
Common terms and phrases
altiplano Anthropocene Austin became Bolivia’s lithium Bolivia's lithium project Bolivian government brine building capitalism Carlos cars cathode chapter Chile Chinese companies city of Potosí climate Cochabamba COMCIPO COMIBOL convocatoria country’s coup coup d’état critical despite electric EnergyX engineering entrepreneurial especially ethnographic evaporation ponds Evo Morales explained extractivist facilities flexible extractivism FMC-Lithco future geologist geopolitics global energy transition GNRE green energy green energy transition hydrocarbons important Indigenous industrial lithium lead-acid battery lithium carbonate lithium company lithium extraction lithium industrialization lithium reserves lithium-ion batteries litio Márquez material mineral mining mobilization Palca Photo by author plant policymaking political economic potassium chloride Potosí Department problem producing lithium production Quantum resistance resource Salar de Atacama Salar de Uyuni seen social Soruco strategy Teague Téllez tin smelter tion transformation University vision wider lithium YLB-ACISA Zimmern ob Rottweil