The Anthropocene has arrived riding a wave of pollution. From "forever
chemicals" to oceanic garbage patches, human-made chemical compounds are
seemingly everywhere. Concerned about how these compounds disrupt
multiple lives and ecologies, environmental scholars, activists, and
affected communities have sought to curb the causes of pollution,
focusing especially on the extractive industries. In Worlds of Gray and
Green, authors Sebastián Ureta and Patricio Flores challenge us to
rethink extraction as ecological practice. Adopting an environmental
humanities analytic lens, Ureta and Flores offer a rich ethnographic
exploration of the waste produced by Chile's El Teniente, the world's
largest underground mine. Deposited in a massive dam, the waste--known
as tailings--engages with human and non-human entities in multiple ways
through a process the authors call geosymbiosis. Some of these
geosymbioses result in toxicity and damage, while others become the
basis of lively novel ecologies. A particular kind of power emerges in
the process, one that is radically indifferent to human beings but that
affects them in many ways. Learning to live with geosymbioses offers a
tentative path forward amid ongoing environmental devastation.