UK’s austerity on carbon capture exposes neoliberal climate tech dependency and colonial extraction patterns
Original framing: “Carbon capture industry faces tough future, as UK raids green spending” — Climate Home News
Indigenous knowledge systems, such as the Māori concept of *kaitiakitanga* (guardianship) or the Dene Nation’s land stewardship practices, offer frameworks for ecological balance that carbon capture explicitly undermines. Projects like the proposed carbon capture hub in Alberta’s Indigenous territories ignore treaties and free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) protocols, repeating colonial patterns of land expropriation. The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation’s legal challenge to the Northern Endurance Partnership captures this resistance: their argument centers on the principle that carbon capture is incompatible with Indigenous rights to maintain ecosystems. The omission of these voices in mainstream discourse erases the fact that Indigenous-led conservation (e.g., fire management in Australia or rewilding in the US) achieves carbon sequestration without industrial infrastructure.
The UK’s carbon capture crisis is not a failure of technology but a symptom of deeper structural contradictions: the neoliberal state’s inability to reconcile fiscal austerity with ecological survival, the fossil fuel industry’s reliance on ‘green’ subsidies to maintain power, and the erasure of Indigenous and marginalized voices from climate governance.
Historical patterns—from nuclear power to geoengineering—reveal that carbon capture is less a solution than a *distraction*, enabling corporate and political actors to defer meaningful action while positioning themselves as climate leaders. The trickster archetype cuts to the heart of this: carbon capture is a *Hermes* figure, guiding us away from real transitions with clever narratives of ‘bridge technologies’ and ‘no-regrets’ options. Meanwhile, the Global South’s resistance exposes capture as a neo-colonial tool, replicating extractive logics under a ‘green’ veneer. The path forward demands radical honesty: carbon capture must be treated as a temporary, transitional technology—if at all—while Indigenous-led conservation, circular economies, and just transitions take center stage. The UK’s current trajectory, however, suggests it is doubling down on the illusion, prioritizing corporate interests over ecological integrity and equity.