What can the history of colonial resource extraction teach us about the power dynamics involved in the global distribution of renewable technologies and the ethics surrounding resource use for "green" technologies?

Water spills in, through and above the land in Imperial County, California. Water channeled by generations of patched-up infrastructure sustains the extraction of energy from land and people. This water grows America’s winter crops, penetrates the ground to evict precious geothermal fluids, and somewhere along the way, it gets stolen… “(like) history”, in the words of Kumeyaay indigenous poet Tommy Pico. This paper follows water to its stopping points and asks what happens to people when increasingly industrialized ventures divert water from the earth. The setting of the Imperial Valley offers a case study for many future borderlands of “mitigation” efforts: landscapes modified by (often failed) cycles of extraction over the course of the 20th century now proposed as the new frontiers of green science for a warming world. The voices of women in the Imperial Valley in particular bring attention to the deserts created by renewed cycles of extraction in the county over the last century. This paper ties scientific and social scientific literature with the points of view of tribal members heard through the “Lithium Valley Commission”, social justice leaders from the Valley and intrepid citizen-scientists. Hearing the questions raised by the work and activism of women in the Imperial Valley makes way for a more balanced consideration of risks in the deployment of large-scale climate mitigation technologies.

Questions for the Roundtable:
- Can we talk about energy transition in Latin America or, rather, of accumulation of different forms of energy sources? How does this compare to other regions?
- What do we learn from the history of extractivism and centre-periphery thought that could be helpful in discussing the current global climate challenges?
- What possible roles can play regions rich in natural resources in the global scenario and how do those roles align with local, regional and national interests?
- How can we look at the past and present relationship with energy and the environment from the justice perspective?