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Worldeater Series: Industrialisation of colonial sustainability
The sustainability industry is built to sustain a colonial world order. What have been, and continue to be, the narratives, mechanisms and systems that establish and advance colonial sustainability?
Industrial sustainability accelerates colonisation
Early industrial sustainability projects include “Sir” Richard Arkwright’s 1771 development Cromford Mills in Derwent Valley, England — the first industrial hydro-powered cotton spinning mill. It was supplied by raw cotton produced by enslaved people in the Americas. As acknowledged by the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, the mill “led to unprecedented demands for cotton, which contributed to an inhuman and brutal regime of historic global slavery”.
Whether it’s lithium mining for the solar energy industry, the wind energy industry’s non-recyclable turbine blades, or the food vs. fuel debate plaguing “sustainable aviation”, we see similar exploitative geopolitical and socioeconomic dynamics in the imperial governing of modern sustainability technologies today.
Colonial sustainability refrains from serious attempts at degrowth or reducing consumption, as this would expose the myths of conscious capitalism and the triple bottom line, hurt corporate profits, and infringe upon…