Lithium's Northern Buzz: Extractivism, Energy Transitions, and Resource Frontiers in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Québec

Donald Kingsbury

Global Environmental Politics, 2024, vol. 24, issue 4, 61-82

Abstract: In the "buzz" before extraction begins in earnest, landscapes, financial interests, and communities are reshaped in anticipation of economic windfalls—even if a project never materializes. The buzz around critical minerals necessary for decarbonization technologies adds the existential threat of the climate crisis to the financial, social, and political pressures that normally drive resource extraction. As this article illustrates in its study of the emerging lithium frontier in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Québec, these processes are always overdetermined, blurring simple causal explanations—particularly in the early and sustaining "buzz" of extraction. Drawing from interviews with frontline communities and decision makers, I aim here to assess the relationship between extraction and energy transitions at emerging energy frontiers of the Global North. Path dependency, geopolitics, and local dynamics all inform the (re)formation of resource frontiers and, in the process, offer new ways to consider the politics of extraction and energy transitions in the context of intensifying climate crises.

Keywords: Energy transition; extractivism; lithium; critical minerals; resource frontier; Canada; Québec; buzz phase of extraction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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