From the lithium-rich salt flats of northern Chile to the electrified megacities of China and the green recycling dreams of Norway, transitions reshape our planet in situated and uneven ways. This roundtable, part of the Worlds of Lithium project  (www.worldsoflithium.eu), mobilizes the concept of “bipolar transitions” (Weinberg & Bonelli 2021) to understand how technological replacements unfold through unstable humors — not just moods, but vital fluids entangled with land, water, and human and non human bodies. Rather than fixed North–South geographies, bipolar transitions invites us to trace polarities of humor — manic and depressive — as they surface unevenly across bodies, territories, and infrastructures. These humors often coexist, overlap, and clash: manic drives to extract and decarbonize entangled with melancholic residues of depletion and loss. This is not just a metaphor of disorder, but a conceptual tool to grasp how transitions reorganize time, space, and matter through instability, friction, and excess. 

It is in this spirit that we return to Italo Calvino’s provocation: “The inferno of the living is already here. But who and what is not inferno — and how do we help it endure?” This roundtable asks: Who and what is not inferno — here, now, in the midst of transitions — and how do we learn to recognize it, care for it, and make space for it to persist?