Shifting Gears to a New Transportation Future
Political unrest often forces us to rethink outdated systems, revealing solutions that have been within reach all along. From electric vehicles as an alternative to rising gas prices, to renewed conversations about wind power in Venezuela, climate-friendly options are often not only best for the environment, but economically and socially, too. As the planet sends us increasingly dire warnings, it’s imperative that we understand that clinging to fossil fuels isn’t doing us any good, and that transitioning to renewable energy holds a much more just and equitable future for all.
But perhaps even more important is shifting the mindset that we need to be using so much energy in the first place, especially in the transportation sector.
The transition to EVs should also prompt us to question our car dependence altogether. What if we instead imagined a world where communities are designed for pedestrians rather than cars? A world where we invest in accessible, reliable public transit and bike infrastructure rather than new highways and parking lots? While these solutions require widespread systemic change, the shift to renewables that many countries are already making proves that we’re certainly capable of such upheavals.
The importance of transportation alternatives amid the EV boom becomes even more apparent when we look into the harmful mining that goes into the production of these vehicles. This is an issue we’ll explore in an upcoming interview with Thea Riofrancos, political scientist and author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. Extraction explores the harms of mining lithium, a metal used to produce lithium-ion batteries, which are a major component in EVs, as well as for increasing our capacity to store solar and wind energy.
Riofrancos’s book opens in the Atacama salt flats in Chile, which is among the largest lithium reserves in the world. The process that pumps precious lithium-rich brine to the surface of the salt flats depletes the already scarce available freshwater and disrupts the vibrant yet fragile desert ecosystem. Here’s a sneak peek from our interview with Riofrancos:
“ There's a very common trope that dates to colonialism that the landscapes of extraction are empty. And from the colonial period to the present in Latin America and elsewhere in the world, people searching for those resources have said, ‘Well, it doesn't matter. Nobody lives here. There's no important communities or life. All there is is the resources, the copper, the oil, the lithium, whatever is of interest.’ And that is very rarely, to never the case….
“[In the Atacama salt flat] there are these amazing endemic species, including the Andean flamingo, this light pastel pink, beautiful bird that touches down on the salt flat during its migratory patterns and eats different snacks from the lagoon.
“And then around the salt flat, where we begin to have lusher vegetation and also fresh water supplies underground, that's where we have human communities that have developed really amazing forms of agriculture using ancestral Indigenous knowledge developed over thousands of years. In many ways it's a testament to the resilience of life because it's not just the driest desert on earth and the oldest desert on earth, it's also very high altitude, very big ranges of temperature, hot during the day, freezing at night, very arid. It's just an area in which we could think life has difficulty surviving. But as the saying goes, life always finds a way.”
This isn’t to say that we should slow down or halt a widescale transition to renewables. As Riofrancos notes in her book, we can “walk and chew gum at the same time,” or decenter fossil fuels without leaving the most vulnerable among us behind. Whether it’s the communities living along the Atacama salt flats, the beautiful Andean flamingos, or the countless other victims of extractive frontiers, a just transition must include everyone.
While it may feel discouraging to think that even our solutions have complications, Extraction is ultimately a hopeful story. It invites us to see the energy transition as a broader systemic shift – one that can spark deeper, positive societal change. It asks us to imagine the possibilities and to dream of what a different transportation and energy future can look like.
There’s a reason “reduce” comes first in the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Reducing our impact must go hand in hand with transitioning to renewable energy sources. And we’re already on track for a huge change in the type of energy we consume – why not change how much we use as well?
Stay tuned for our interview with Thea Riofrancos in an upcoming broadcast.
Bella Smith
Assistant Producer
