The Extraction of Madness#
In Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th-century painting, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, a doctor removes a flower from a patient’s skull. This satirical image depicts a legitimized but absurd procedure—knowledge accepted without critical support. Today, the “green dream” of white mining mirrors this absurdity by claiming that the only way to save the environment is to destroy it more efficiently. We have become “sleepwalkers,” moving forward with urgency but without awareness of the wreckage beneath our feet.
Awakening the Entropological Pact#
To move forward, we must replace the “infernal alternative” of more mining with an “entropological pact”—a commitment to resist the systemic inertia of irreversible degradation. This requires a transition that prioritizes “slow science,” degrowth, and the regeneration of critical thinking. We must move from “white mining’s dream” to a collective imagination that sees lithium not as a disposable resource, but as a set of planetary relations.
Toward a Regenerative Future#
Explaining the System: The Potential of Degrowth#
Degrowth is an “umbrella concept” that proposes downscaling energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world. It challenges the “techno-fixes” that intensify the crisis and instead prioritizes human well-being over perpetual GDP growth. In the context of lithium, this means moving away from the “bigger is better” EV trend and toward a “safe, just, and equitable” reduction in resource throughput.
Complicating Factors: The Limits of the State#
However, degrowth often relies on the state as a neutral agent, ignoring how state agencies—like SERNAGEOMIN—often reinforce extractivist logics. In Latin America, “new progressivisms” have often used extraction to fund social programs, creating a “spiral of endless entropic acceleration”. We need “negenthropic” explorations—new forms of social organization that do not simply repeat the colonial hierarchies of the past.
Tracing the Consequences: More-than-Chemical Connections#
The consequence of a truly “good” recycling practice is the creation of “more-than-chemical connections”. This means acknowledging the “ongoing material and energetic rearrangements” of our world. For example, if Norway has the infrastructure and wealth to recycle safely, perhaps it should recycle batteries from regions that lack those resources, rather than only focusing on its own “national” loop. It means “staying with the trouble” of our entropic reality and refusing to accept “inevitability”.
Dreaming Otherwise#
The challenge is to “unobstruct” our thinking from the colonial impositions that tell us there is no alternative. We must cultivate “cracks in the closure” where silenced futures might speak again. A closed loop for lithium only makes sense as a planetary practice, grounded in “careful consumption and recovery”. As the Norwegian scientists observed, “even if you’re trying to do something good,” you must remain vigilant of the separations you create. Let us stop sleepwalking and start dreaming of a world that values the order of the salt flat as much as the charge in the battery.
