Under the guise of the ‘green’ transition and implementing pathways to decarbonisation, a new frontier of capitalist expansion has emerged, in the form of a planetary race for minerals such as cobalt, copper, rare earths and in particular, lithium. Most of the world's exploitable reserves of lithium are located in an area commercially known as the ‘lithium triangle’, a geometric figure delineated by the salares (salt flats) of Uyuni in Bolivia, Atacama in Chile and Hombre Muerto in Argentina. Salares are dried lake beds with underground reservoirs containing high concentrations of dissolved salts, such as lithium, potassium and sodium. This is a result of activity in the surrounding volcanoes of the Andes cordillera. Over millions of years, minerals accumulate in these peaks that descend with melting ice during the spring melt, leaching into the lower-level soils, and eventually settling in the depressions at the bottom of the salares.