Paper Short Abstract:

The UK ratified the Paris agreement in 2016 and agreed to substantially decarbonise. However, in this presentation I draw on fieldwork conducted both with a local government in the North-East of England and post-coalonial communities to suggest that a post-carbon future is likely unattainable.

Paper Abstract:

County Durham is one of England's larger local government areas. The extraction of fossil fuel from the county's subterranean forest played an integral role not just in the area’s economy, but in Britain's projection of power for more than a century. Yet, there are no longer any extant coal mines in Durham, deep or otherwise. Furthermore, Durham County Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and committed to substantially decarbonising the council by 2030 and decarbonising the entire county by 2050. It charged its Low Carbon Economy team with being both the mother and the midwife of its plan to decarbonise the County Durham.

While the team is composed of exceedingly competent individuals, I suggest that they are unlikely to attain this second goal and that furthermore achieving a post-carbon future for Durham is distinctly unlikely. I base my prediction upon participant observation and semi-structured interviews that I conducted with the team, and the wider council, between 2020 and 2021, and participant observation and interviews that I conducted with the inhabitants of a couple of Durham mining communities between 2022 and 2023.

The team's failure to achieve a post-carbon County Durham will I suggest result from a myriad factors including lack of public engagement, the fickleness of central government, and a focus on resolving matters through techno-fixes and solutionism.