The Limits to Green Growth: Rematerialising UK’s Pathway to Net Zero

Speaker: Dipali Mathur (Ulster University, Belfast)
Date: Monday March 10, 2025. 17:00–18:15 GMT. Online only.

The twin ‘green’ and ‘digital’ transitions have been embraced by the UK as the roadmap to achieving Net Zero by 2050. However, the representation of the ‘clean energy transition’ as the ‘sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’ pathway to decarbonisation belies the material reality of the embedded toxic harms in the physical infrastructures and technologies vital for powering this seemingly ‘de-materialised’ carbon-free future. In reality, the green energy transition is built upon the colonial legacy of offshoring the ‘dirty’ and extractive industries to poorer countries of the global south where lax regulations, poor infrastructure and unstable governance enable the continued exploitation of forced and child labour and the pollution of the local environment. In demonstrating that the green and digital transitions adopted by wealthy nations are in fact ‘energy blind’ and ‘materials blind’, my presentation will foreground the “green extractivism” that underpins narratives and policies about a ‘green’ and ‘clean’ transition away from fossil fuels by asking question, “What counts as ‘good policy’ apropos UK’s green transition?” Implicit in this inquiry is the further critical framing of “whose version of ‘good’ does policy privilege, and at whose expense?”

The Material Digital Humanities seminar is organised by Gabriel Bodard (Digital Humanities Research Hub, University of London, UK) and Chiara Palladino (Department of Classics, Furman University, USA) in 2025. This seminar series will present a range of discussions around materiality and the research possibilities offered by digital methods and approaches. Beyond just the value of digitization and computational research to the study of material culture, we are especially interested in theoretical and digital approaches to the question of materiality itself. We do not restrict ourselves to any period of history or academic discipline, but want to encourage interdisciplinarity and collaborative work, and the valuable exchange of ideas enabled by cross-pollination of languages, areas of history, geography and cultures.