Fw-- Re-thinking the ethical ramifications of green energy is a prerequisite to solvency. Refuse to sacrifice the lives of the oppressed to protect the oppressors.

These processes can be seen as instances of energy or carbon colonialism, whereby countries in the global South and other peripheries are treated as carbon dumps, or targeted for grabbing land and resources necessary to reduce CO2 emissions generated primarily in the North (Bachram, 2004). Moreover, several of those projects “rely on extractive landscapes forged through various forms of physical and structural violence” (Camargo & Ojeda, 2017, p. 62). In other words, projects as diverse as wind farms, biofuel plantations, dams and lithium mining follow the same “green extractivist” logic. According to this logic, extracting as much resources, energy and profits as fast as possible from a territory, irrespective of the impacts on local socioecological relations, is framed as necessary not only for the wealth and wellbeing of populations in host locations—but also, increasingly, as an imperative for “saving” the climate and the planet.

Climate change mitigation comprises a vast array of economic and technological interventions and strategies, operating at multiple scales and across multiple sectors. The cornerstone of mainstream mitigation policy is, on principle, a shift away from fossil fuels—the highest global CO2 “emitter”—towards “renewable” or less carbon-intensive forms of energy generation. The socioenvironmental implications of expanding renewable energy frontiers are becoming central to research and debate in political ecology and critical geography (Cavanagh & Benjaminsen, 2017; McCarthy, 2015). There is increasing attention, for instance, to the extraction of minerals necessary for batteries and other “low-carbon” (Cavanagh & Himmelfarb, 2015; Marx, 1976). Contemporary extractive and agricultural frontiers, including those for renewable energy, reproduce the same logic, with different degrees of intensity.