damian white a green industrial revolution

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A Green Industrial Revolution? SustainableTechnological Innovation in a Global AgeD.F. White

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A Green Industrial Revolution?Sustainable Technological Innovation

in a Global Age

DAMIAN FINBAR WHITE

In declaring that the twenty-first century could be defined by a new green industrialrevolution, Factor Four and Natural Capitalism suggests that an increasinglypronounced technological turn is occurring in the environmental debate. Yet, howcredible is this project as a whole? While hampered by managerialist andtechnologically reductionist premises, this paper nevertheless suggests this

ecomodernist project deserves careful scrutiny. However, the extent to which thepolitical narrative which frames Factor Four and Natural Capitalism is internallyconsistent is examined. Whether the emerging spatial and temporal geography of aneo-liberal global political economy is compatible with this project is considered.Finally, the wisdom (and desirability) of leaving it up to business interests to dominateand define sustainable technological innovation is evaluated.

The recent publishing ofFactor FourandNatural Capitalism adds weight tothe notion that important shifts are currently occurring in the environmentaldebate. Informed by a central premise that if resource productivity wasincreased by a factor of four, the world would enjoy twice the wealth that is

currently available, whilst simultaneously halving the stress placed on ournatural environment [VonWeizscker, Lovins and Lovins, 1998: xv], FactorFour makes a bold case for the argument that technological innovation,aspirations for better living and ecological concerns could become perfectlycompatible partners. Expanding on this theme in Natural Capitalism

Environmental Politics, Vol.11, No.2, Summer 2002, pp.126PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

Damian Finbar White ([email protected]) is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Schoolof Cultural and Innovation Studies, University of East London. Earlier versions of this articlewere presented as a paper at the Centre for Environmental Technology, Imperial College,University of London, 27 March 2000; Policy Agendas for Sustainable Technological Innovation,Department of Innovation Studies, University of East London, 13 December 2000; Departmentof Politics, Keele University, 9 October 2000; The Red Green Study Group London, January

2001; Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, 30 March 2001 and the Environment andSociety Research Group, International Sociological Association, University of Cambridge, 5 July2001. He would like to thank participants at these gatherings as well as Ted Benton, GodfreyBoyle, Neil Curry, Andrew Dobson, Sarah Friel, Horace Herring, Arthur Mol, Eamon Molloy,Geoff Robinson, Andrew Rudin, Ariel Salleh, Ernest von Weizscker and Richard Yorke forfeedback and encouragement on earlier drafts of this article.

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[Hawken, Lovins and Lovins, 1999], the authors offer a broader agenda, basedon new energy and resource efficiency technologies, waste elimination andclean production strategies and the development of a service and flowseconomy that is seen as laying the basis for nothing less than a new greenindustrial revolution. Drawing from Amory Lovins own pioneering work ineco-technologies, yet combining this with ecological economics [Hawken,1994; Daly, 1994], developments in industrial ecology [Allenby and Richards,1994; Ayres and Ayres, 1996] and recent innovations that have occurred inenvironmental design, engineering and architecture [Wines, 2000], the endresult is a stimulating but odd synthesis.

For those used to engaging in the political end of green discourses, thesetexts make for disconcerting reading. In contrast to the problem-orientedand technologically pessimist tone that has dominated muchenvironmentalist thinking over the last four decades, Factor Four and

Natural Capitalism are relentlessly upbeat. In comparison to accounts of

green futures which have made a virtue out of austerity or abandoningaffluence [Trainer, 1985], it is boldly declared that efficiency does notmean curtailment, discomfort or privatisation [VonWeizscker et al., 1998:

xxii]. Unashamedly co-opting the language of Enlightenment optimism, it ismaintained that progress can be redefined in ecologically more benignways. Indeed, rather than finishing off capitalism, a transition to anecological society is seen as potentially making a profit for business. Is thisproject either viable or desirable though?

Some Initial Evaluations

For some, the very use of the term Natural Capitalism may suggest thatthis project is so evidently ideological with its clumsy reification ofcapitalism that further investigation is not required. Others who initiallystray further may be dissuaded by the manner in which these texts deploy arhetorical style more common to popular management literature thanacademic texts. For green texts, though, it is worth noting that both FactorFourandNatural Capitalism received a remarkably high profile receptionon publication.1 Receiving warm reviews from both left and right-leaningpublications, these texts went on to attract the attention of US and Europeanpolitical elites while the language and concepts used by Factor Fourrapidlyproliferated into the discourses of UN and EU environmental bodies and

research councils. Sceptics who subscribe to the (not unreasonable) maximthat there is an inverse relationship between the elite popularity of an ideaand its social or ecological usefulness will of course hardly be swayed bysuch endorsement. A careful reading of these texts, though, suggests furthertensions and inconsistencies can be found.

2 ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

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For example, Factor FourandNatural Capitalism are certainly orientatedtowards crafting a discourse which appeals to elite policy makers, corporatemanagers and investors. Yet, whether we are considering the huge amount ofenergy wastage that is demonstrated as an endemic feature of advancedcapitalist societies, the fact that 80 per cent of products are discarded after asingle use or that 99 per cent of the original materials used in the productionof goods made in the USA become waste after six week of sales[VonWeizscker et al., 1998: xx] these texts also provide a powerful critiqueof existing arrangements. Outlining the huge waste of energy and materials,of time and effort that mark current forms of production, distribution andexchange, it is convincingly argued that production processes in advancedcapitalist societies are massively inefficient [Hawken et al., 1999: 8].

Working through the array of green innovations that couldsignificantly improve energy, materials and transport productivity, anequally interesting case is made that much of the waste, pollution,

environmental degradation and risk generation currently produced bycontemporary capitalism is simply unnecessary. Lovins and his co-workersargue that if social and eco-industrial reorganisation was coupled with theimplementation of industrial ecology and broader forms of sustainabletechnological innovation, massive opportunities could now exist forreducing environmental impacts.

Moreover, evidence is provided that the range of green innovationsdetailed in these texts are far from hypothetical projects. Rather, endlessexamples are provided of new energy, material or transport productivity thatare at various stages of the research and development process of major USand European companies or on the market. Such developments converge

with evidence that research programmes in the applied and even the hardsciences in the academy are increasingly taking a green turn with the riseand institutional consolidation in elite universities of research programmes inindustrial ecology, environmental engineering, and even greenchemistry.2 A series of reports and commentaries emerged in the wake ofthese texts that confirmed the growing technical viability of large-scale shiftstowards renewable energy, decarbonising and resource productivitytechnologies.3 Indeed, if we consider these developments alongside the factthat the EU has committed itself to shifting 20 per cent of energy productionin Europe towards renewables by 2020 or the growing literature whichsuggests ecological modernisation strategies are consolidating and spreading

outside their traditional base [Mol and Sonnenfeldt, 2000; Mol, 2001], itcould be argued that structural conditions are emerging to facilitate thisdevelopment further.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of these texts, though (if frustratinglyundeveloped), is found in the suggestion that opportunities now exist for

3A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

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transforming current zero-sum views of the relationship betweenenvironment protection and development. Demonstrating a sensitivity to theextent to which aspects of the UNCED Rio agreement in 1992 were seen bymany in the South as a Northern attempt to frame the globalenvironmental agenda [Agarwal and Narain, 1991; Redclift, 2000], theFactor Four/Natural Capitalism project is presented as offering a new wayforward. Thus it is claimed that sustainable technological innovationcoupled with institutional and productive reorganisation could ensure thateven the gravest world-wide distribution problems can be solved withoutany part of the world having to accept significant sacrifices in well being[VonWeizscker et al., 1998: 268]. A principal ecological duty of the Northshould be not only to embark on a Factor Four transition as soon as possiblebut to do all it can to facilitate both increased prosperity and the efficiencyrevolution in the South [VonWeizscker et al., 1998: 266].

Factor Four and Natural Capitalism, then, are clearly full of highly

ambitious claims that trample over many twentieth-century radicalecological orthodoxies. These texts also suggest that a technological turnwill increasingly define the environmental debate in the twenty-firstcentury. Is this turn compelling or normatively attractive?

This article seeks to investigate this issue. We begin by consideringimmediate weaknesses in this project and the broader discussion it hasgenerated to date. Following this, an attempt is made to open up a criticalyet also self-consciously recuperative engagement with this project.Finally, some thoughts are offered on how a critical social theory of theenvironment will have to re-orientate itself in technological times [Lash,2001]. The new industrialism may offer a range of ecologically rational

[Dryzek, 1987; Plumwood, 1998] solutions to current problems. Questionsremain though as to whether the success of this project might be achievedat the expense of, rather than in line with, the expansion of democraticrationality and social justice.4

Evident Weaknesses and Broader Criticism ofFactor Four and

Natural Capitalism

Even a superficial reading ofFactor FourandNatural Capitalism revealssome fairly glaring weaknesses in this project. Concerns could immediatelybe flagged regarding the manner this project bolsters reductionist currents in

the environmental debate. One need not share the suspicion of science andtechnology apparent in deep ecological quarters to recognise how scientismand a narrowly focused technological reductionism can systematicallydetract attention from the social and political roots of social and ecologicalproblems [Habermas, 1971; Benton, 1994]. Reinforcing recent moves in


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World Bank, OECD and corporate discourses to see sustainable developmentas a capital exchange process, a high degree of objectification enters intothis discussion. In Factor FourandNatural Capitalism nature is reducedto a resource out there to be managed as natural capital and the humansubject becomes simply human capital. As Molloy has noted, there is littlerecognition that the use of this language: open[s] up the possibility ofregarding the entire non-human world, genes, bodies, species asinstrumentally there for exploitation, appropriation, and accumulation [Molloy, 2000]. The politics that emerge from this project have distinctlymanagerialist overtones. As Hawkens, Lovins and Lovins state in NaturalCapitalism as a broad prescriptive vision: Communities and whole societiesneed to be managed with the same appreciation for integral design asbuildings, the same frugally simple engineering as lean factories, and thesame entrepreneurial drives as great companies [Hawken et al., 1999: 286].Consequently, there is a tendency to repeat the classic mistake of static and

a-historical utopianism the idea that politics can be replaced by rationaldesign or scientific managerialism. It is also the case that the managerialistcaste of this project ensures little awareness is demonstrated of the extent towhich there is a long, and now well documented, history of public andenvironmental health being used as regulatory strategies of social control[Darier, 1999]. Beyond these fairly evident weakness though, this project hasencountered more trenchant critics of late of the opinion that this project isfar more fundamentally flawed.

Thus, deep green critics such as Wolfgang Sachs [1999] have argued thatthis project is inadequate for failing to deal with the global survival crisisfor which evidence is indeed incontestable [Sach, 1999: 47]. It is an

agenda of sufficiency, self-limitation and a sense of enoughness thatneeds to triumph over demands for eco-efficiency and resourceproductivity.

Alternatively, contrarian voices have been keen to assert that this projectis merely dealing with environmental problems which are largely fictitiousand that the idea we need to increase resource productivity is based on afalse sense of limits. Factor Fouris thus a project which is against progressand ultimately a fairly conservative attempt to downscale production.[Heartfield, 1998; Gilliott, 1999]. Meanwhile, for Vaclav Smil [1998, 2000]and Horace Herring [2000a; 2000b] it is the sweeping nature of this projectand its supremely rational utopianism that is its ultimate undoing.

Perhaps the central academic debate that these works and the broaderfactor x discussion have provoked so far, though, has centred aroundthe question of whether the pursuit of eco-efficiency and resourceproductivity may simply generate multiple rebound effects which unravelany gains made.


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Simultaneously accused then of being too optimistic andtoo pessimistic,too utopian and too conservative, too rationalistic and not rationalisticenough, it would appear this project has had to negotiate difficult terrain. Isit the case though, as these harsher critics have suggested, that this projectis fundamentally misconceived?

On Babies and Bath Water Considering the Critics

There are grounds for feeling that many of the more trenchant critics of thisproject are holding positions very bit as problematic as the project theycriticise. Both deep green and contrarian critiques of this project arepremised on the questionable assumption that global environmental changehas to be viewed in terms of the simple choice of catastrophe or cornucopia:Pollyanna or Pangloss. That nearly two decades of research inenvironmental geography, critical social theory and environmental

sociology suggest that environmental degradation is a more complex storymarked by massive regional and spatial variations, uncertainty, legislativesuccesses as well as notable failures, continued environmental injusticesand well-grounded looming dangers is simply not entertained.5

Both these currents also premise their counter-arguments ondeterministic grounds. A desocialised environmental determinism lingersaround Sachs advocacy of the virtues of limits and sufficiency. (SurelyLovins Hawken and Lovins are correct here to argue that the point of anecological project should be about improving the quality of life for allrather than redistributing scarcity [Hawkens et al., 1999: 158]). Equallythough, a productive forces determinism underpins the contrarianarguments of Heartfield and Gilliott. The implicit assumption here wouldappear to be that it is the scale of productive processes and the netthroughput of materials that should be regarded as a mark of progress.Based on this reasoning, one would assume that profligacy and wastegeneration are forward-looking virtues or that the heavy industrialinstallations of the high industrial revolution are more progressive thananything the new industrialism has to offer(?)

More troubling still, both of these interventions are disturbing in the waythat they reduce the environment/development question to a further series ofbinary polarities. Thus, it would appear that for the deep ecological/contrarian world-views the only choice open to the developing world issimply to accept existing arrangements, reject development or embrace a

Victorian phase of dirty industrial development with all its Dickensianmisery. No possibilities then for the people of the South to have the optionof leap-frog technologies and industrial ecologies which facilitate as fastas is possible a clean transition to a ecological modernity and theinformation age should this be what they want?


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If we turn to the principal technical objection to this project therebound effect there is no doubt that well grounded research suggestsserious questions could be pressed against the idea that pursuing energyefficiency in itselfand under existing socio-economic, political and culturalconditions offers an easy solution to current problems [Brookes, 2000;

Rudin, 2000; Owen, 2000; Moezzi, 2000]. Equally though, this discussioncan suffer from an excessive fatalism about the inevitability of such effects.Thus, it needs to be recognised that critical questions remain concerninghow much, how rapidly, in which sectors and with what manifestationsrebounds occur [Schipper, 2000]. Different social, cultural, institutional andpolitical settings would seem to effect the success of energy efficiencyprogrammes [Owen, 2000]. Moreover, a recent summary of the current stateof knowledge in the field has argued that a broad consensus emergingamongst energy analysts is that: rebounds are significant but do notthreaten to rob society of most of the benefits of energy efficiency

improvements [Schipper, 2000: 353; also Greening, Green and Difiglio,2000; Haas and Biermayr, 2000; Berkhout, Muskens and Velthuijsen,2000].6

Finally, what can be made of the claim that Factor Fourand NaturalCapitalism are marked by techno-hubris and utopian overstatement?Technological determinism is a problem in this project which will bereturned to later. However, if it is accepted that a credible ecologicalproject needs to stake its hopes not on a return to the past but on thecapacity of modern societies to transcend themselves and enter on adifferent mode of development from the one which has shaped them up tonow [Gorz, 1994: 7], it seems increasingly evident that advanced

technology will have to play a significant role in this development. Indeed,even on the issue of utopianism, Factor FourandNatural Capitalism aremarked by a rather static utopian sensibility, However, it would seemgrievously misjudged to move from this to dismissing the value of utopianspeculation in its entirety.

How then might one move this discussion in a different direction? Twoissues would seem to provide useful orientating points. First, if this projectis technically possible (even in part) and viewed as provisionally desirable,it would seem evident that a progressive critique should explore thepolitical, economic, cultural and social factors that might hold back such adevelopment. Secondly, it clearly needs to be asked if ecological rationality

is possible within the context of the given system, to what extent might thisbe achieved at the expense of democratic rationality, environmental justiceand social equity?


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Developing a Progressive Critique: Natural Capitalism or Natural

Social Democracy?

Critics on the left may argue that business people pursue only short

term self-interest unless guided by legislation in the public interest.However, we believe the world stands on the threshold of basicchanges in the conditions of business. Companies that ignore themessage of natural capitalism do so at their peril [Hawken et al.,1999: xiii]

In both Factor FourandNatural Capitalism a dominant, business friendlydiscourse provides the public framing of these texts. Full of rhetoric thatemphasises the importance of harnessing the talents of business to solve theworlds deepest environmental problems [Hawken et al., 1999: xiii],constant attempts are made in this dominant discourse to establish themarket friendly credentials of this project. Drawing from a neo-classical

view of technological change that assumes that firms will choose thetechnique of production that offers the maximum possible rate of profit, itis maintained that the eco-technological and other changes advocated willoccur quite simply because if companies do not introduce they will losecompetitive advantage [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: xix; Hawken et al.,1999: xiii]. Something of an inevitablist thesis is cultivated and a smoothcompatibility assured between this project and the interests of corporateCEOs. Thus, at certain points, we are informed that this project is neitherconservative nor liberal in its ideology [Hawken et al., 1999: 20]. Indeed,even lurching at times towards New Right rhetoric, we are assured thatmuch of this project can be implemented largely in the marketplace, driven

by individual choice and business competition, rather than requiringgovernments to tell everyone how to live [Von Weizcker et al., 1998:

xxiii]. A number of questions are clearly left hanging in the air thoughconcerning how this vision of responsible corporate-led greenery is goingto come to pass.

For example, at numerous points we are assured extensive profits arepossible through pursuing Factor Four/Natural Capitalist measures andexamples are provided of individual firms that have achieved this. Itremains very unclear though just how representative these companies are orhow industry-led ecological restructuring might actually work at a broadersectoral level. Certain groupings within sectors of national economies could

possibly have a vested interest in pursuing the range of activities advocatedby Factor Four and Natural Capitalism. The emerging sustainabletechnologies companies (which are currently estimated to have created aninvestment sector of $20 billion), obviously are a case in point. Mattersremain much more uncertain though with the far larger and more powerful


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industrial sectors of the old economy (notably oil, chemical and automobilesectors). Consideration of the difficulties that are generated bytechnological lock ins and path dependencies is clearly important here.That is, the manner in which technologies can clearly become embedded ininfrastructures and cultural contexts long after they have ceased to beoptimal [Elliot, 1997]. Yet, there is clearly the further issue of motivation.One could wonder are such companies going to simply write off possiblybillions of dollars of fixed investments because a production process hasbeen deemed ecologically redundant?

The Lovinses and their co-workers do point out that this situation isoften more fluid than radical critics often allow. Thus, it is noted that manylarge US and Japanese corporations have been at the forefront of researchand development into sustainable technological innovations over recentyears (for example, the automobile sector committing over $5 billionbetween 1993 and 1998 to developing the green or hypercar, Dow

Chemicals developing organic solvents and announcing a $1 billion, ten-year environmental investment programme, DuPont and Toyotaexperimenting with closed loop production processes, etc). Suchdevelopments are interesting and serve as a reminder that the question ofwhether capitalism can internalise its environmental externalities needs tobe viewed as an open one [Sandler, 1994]. However, what is not mentionedis that recent studies also suggest that it has been a need to comply with newregulations rather than the mysterious hidden hand of the market that hasdriven the adoption of clean technology in many industries [Clayton,Spinardi and Williams, 2000]. It would also seem to be the case that industrylobbying groups have sought to discourage exactly this type of regulation

by focusing on energy users rather than producers and emphasisingvoluntary action [Muttitt and Marriott, 2001]. More pressing still, what alsoremains unclear is the actual percentage of the overall company turnoverthat is being diverted into green business ventures.7

What is interesting about these texts, however, is that underneath theglossy and reassuring surface, a rather different second narrative starts toemerge. Notably, after all the various protestations of market purity, asubordinate discourse slowly begin to hint that there might be rather moreproblems between contemporary capitalism (particularly in its current redin tooth and claw neo-liberal mode) and the environment than theircorporate readership might want to hear.

Thus, after endless celebrating win-win scenarios and new eco-businesses opportunities, it is conceded that a central failing of industrial(that is, contemporary) capitalism is that it neglects to assign any value tothe largest stock of capital that it depends on notably the ecosystem. It isrecognised that the market mechanism does not adequately account for its


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own externalities [Hawken et al., 1999: 5]. Moreover, it is also concededthat existing capitalism relies on accounting systems and incentivestructures that actively encourage the liquidation of natural capital. Quiterapidly after embarking down this line of thoughtNatural Capitalists startto list a whole range of structural deficiencies of market societies that areseen as giving rise to ecologically irrational outcomes: from the chronicshort term-ism that governs the movement of investment capital 8 to thedestructive potential of free trade [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: 282]; fromthe whole tax and incentive structure to the irrational use of urban space.Indeed, (and in direct contrast to other corporate friendly statements)concerns are even raised with the massive interests some capital ownershave in preserving existing structures [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: xxvi].

What solutions exist then for dealing with these dilemmas? When thediscussion turns in this direction, both Factor FourandNatural Capitalismbegin to suggest that a range of much deeper changes are necessary for a

functioning green market economy. Thus, drawing from standard themes ofecological economics, it is maintained that markets need to be reconfiguredso that prices reflect the true price of goods (factoring in their environmentalimpacts), GDP needs to be changed to an index which would reflect to amuch greater degree quality of life issues, and indeed it is argued the wholetax and incentive structure needs to be revised. It is maintained that we needa whole rethinking of urban policy and urban planning to encouragesmarter land use stronger neighbourhoods and compact convivial cities[Hawken et al., 1999: 47] to replace anomic and ecologically irrationalurban sprawl. Indeed, shading rather dangerously closely to the redgreenend of the spectrum at one point it is even suggested that we could perhaps

see a moment where a progressive and active trade union movement tookthe lead in demanding just transitions for the workers and communitiesreliant on unsustainable production processes [Hawken et al., 1999: 1].

What is interesting about this turn in the discussion (and somewhat atvariance with the first discourse) is that the sum total of these changessuggests that free-market capitalism needs to be transformed rather morethan the surface self image of this project admits.9 Indeed, creating theconditions of possibility for a viable ecological modernist project wouldappear crucially to depend on a re-legitimised public sphere and a broaderpublic realm that pursues an interventionist economic policy, a credibleindustrial policy and intelligent urban planning. If we ignore here some

rather questionable ideas about taxation that are floated in NaturalCapitalism,10 it could be argued that the actual project the Lovinses and theirco-workers end up with would by and large be more accurately entitled

Natural Social Democracy thanNatural Capitalism.


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Challenges for Green Social Democracy:Homo Consumer asHuman

Being

The discourse ofNatural Social Democracy does seem rather more credible

than itsNatural Capitalistrival. When the discussion turns in this directionit is certainly the case that a series of reforms are advocated in this projectwhich all but the most unthinking dogmatist would recognise as highlydesirable. A series of further obstacles, though, need to be examined.

One of the ongoing doubts that have been raised about the ecologicalrationality of free market societies has revolved around the treadmill ofproduction thesis [Schnaiberg, 1980]. It has been maintained that a centralanti-ecological tendency of contemporary capitalism is that the verydynamics of the production process ensure it has a distinct tendency togenerate endless quantities of products with built in physical obsolescence.The Lovinses and their co-workers are certainly aware of this problem.

Interestingly, though, rather than make immediate recourse to belttightening arguments they make the rather different argument that anecologically rational society would seek to make products that are longlasting, durable and upgradable. It is thus argued we need to move towardsa service and flows economy. The basic idea here is that product durabilitycould be improved by manufacturers becoming less sellers of products andmore providing leasing and renting arrangements for services. Mechanismsand incentive structures could be created so that it is manufacturers that areresponsible for serving, upgrading and disposing of products.

This idea makes good sense and could perhaps play a central role indeveloping an ecologically rational political economy [Dryzek, 1987]. One

could envisage how a service and flows economy might well havetheoretical attractions in business-to-business ventures given that renting ofaccommodation, appliances and equipment is already a well-establishedpart of business culture. As a strategy to make domestic consumption moresustainable though, questions remain as to whether this proposal has fullythought through the complex social, cultural and psychological dynamicsthat consumption has come to play in the lives of the homo consumerof freemarket societies.

For example, it would seem evident that a desire for ownership ofproperty, goods and resources is still intimately and understandably tied inmany advanced capitalist societies with desires for security and autonomy.

Current consumption patterns are also clearly linked in complex ways to thepreserve and legitimisation of distinction [Bourdieu, 1984], conspicuousconsumption as Veblen has observed, the desire for novelty and coping withstatus anxiety in an increasingly anomic world. Credible elaboration of aviable service and flows economy thus needs to address how it is not


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simply built-in physical obsolescence that can give rise to ecologicallyirrational outcomes but built-in cultural obsolescence [OConnor, 1990:12].

Projects that seek to rethink or re-channel consumerism also clearly needto grapple with what can only be called the ideology of consumerism. Thepoint is here not to demonise consumption as Barry has cautioned [Barry,1999]. (Indeed, it would seem evident that large sections of the worldcurrent need to consume more!). But it does seem important to at leastrecognise as Bookchin argues, that one of the increasing irrationalities ofactual existing capitalist societies is the manner in which they arecharacterised at their core by consumption for the sake of consumptioneven when there is no evidence that consumption beyond a certain level

contributes anything to longer term feeling of well being or personal

happiness.11

Indeed, if we consider how current patterns of consumption are centrally

important for maintaining work discipline and the economic health ofcapital as a whole, it would seem evident that buy or die or alternativelywork and spend have become civic duties of the citizen-consumer ofadvanced capitalist societies. To seek the transformation of this towardmore socially and ecologically rational consumption patterns, to championthe active citizen self over the passive consumer self will require a culturaland political project well beyond anything conceptualised by Factor FourorNatural Capitalism.

A Fair and Equitable Green Industrial Revolution in an Age of Neo-

Liberal Globalisation?

The globalisation of neo-liberalism generates further problems in projectsseeking to nurture and generalise a green industrial revolution. Three pointsof tension in particular deserve reflection.

First, there is the problem of agency. The extent, depth and historicaluniqueness of economic globalisation remains a matter of considerabledispute in current debates in political economy (see, for example, Castells[2000a]; Dryzek [1996]; Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton [1999];Hirst and Thompson [1999] Massey [1999]; Holden [2000]; for varyingviews). Discourses of globalisation need to be handled with additionalcare if only because as Massey has noted we are not being offered a

description of how the world is as a legitimising discourse which justifies(after the event) how the world is presently being made [Massey: 1999, 17].However, it would seem increasingly evident that in terms of macroeconomic management, two decades and more of global neo-liberalismhave ensured that the room for manoeuvre of nation states has become more


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constrained than it was in the era of Bretton Woods. Thus, if we accept thatthe transition to a green industrial revolution is going to require significantstructural economic cultural and political change guided by a strong publicpresence, this need is emerging exactly at the time when the capacity ofsingle governments to achieve deep-seated structural reforms of this typehas become more circumscribed. The growing power and mobility ofmultinational corporations has clearly increased their exit options anddecreased the ability of states to tie capital into national economic or eco-regulatory arrangements. The fluidity and sheer scale of finance markets hasreduced the effectiveness of macro economic policies and openedgovernments who seek to move beyond the Washington consensus tospeculative attacks.12

A second area of general difficulties need to be addressed through thenew political economy of space and time [Harvey, 1990, 1996; Smith, 1990;

Lash and Urry, 1994; Urry, 2000; Castells, 2000a, 1997, 2000b; Massey,

1999]. David Harvey [1990: 1824] has argued that an increasinglyimportant manner in which capital deals with crises of over-accumulation isthrough temporal or spatial displacement. If we relate and slightly adjustthese ideas (following Dryzek [1987]) it would seem evident that furtherproblems in addressing environmental questions presently arise from the(increasingly) narrow temporal horizons of global neo-liberalism. Tensionsclearly do exist between the temporal horizons of business (often limited tothe end of year balance sheet), the horizons of politicians (invariably limitedto the electoral cycle) or even the emergence of instantaneous timelesstime as a property of informational capitalism [Castells, 2000a] and themuch longer temporal horizons or glacial time [Urry, 2000] that many

environmental problems need to be addressed within (for example, globalwarming, biodiversity loss, the disposal of nuclear waste).

If we turn to the related issue of the spatial fix, a defining feature of thenew global order according to Urry [2000], Castells [2000a] and Harvey[1990, 1996] is the manner in which it has increasingly given rise to variousmobilities. An aspect of this has been the much noted growing mobilities ofpeople, ideas, images, capital and objects around the globe and the broaderresulting phenomena of time-space compression [Harvey, 1990]. Many ofthese developments, of course, have been tremendously exciting, liberatingand indeed helped generate both a sense of the global environment andperhaps opened possibilities for an alternative democratic globalisation

from below. The reverse side of this though has been the greater liquidityand mobility of capital, waste, toxics, hazards and concurrent the growingcapacities for spatially shifting ecological degradation. Following this, asDryzek [1987, 1997] has argued, questions clearly need to be askedconcerning the extent to which affluent countries, regions, cities or localities


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embarking on ecological modernisation projects are achieving these ends bytransferring their environmental externalities to poor countries, regions,cities or sectors of cities and localities?

While much has been made by contrarian thinkers of late aboutenvironmental improvements occurring in certain cities, certain sectors ofcities or even in advanced states across certain indicators, the question ofenvironmental displacement is rarely mentioned. Yet, within urban areas inthe USA, growing evidence accumulated by the US environmental justicemovement [Faber et al., 1998,] suggests that displacement ofenvironmental bads from affluent white middle class areas to low incomeand ethnic neighbourhoods has been an endemic feature of the capitalistproduction of space, place and nature [Smith, 1990] over the twentiethcentury in the US. The complex economic geography of environmentaldisplacement occurring between affluent cities in the spaces of flows andpoorer areas left behind in the spaces of places [Castells, 2000a] is an

area which needs much greater analysis, since as Swatterthwaite has noted

the fact [is] that businesses and consumers in wealthy cities canmaintain high levels of environmental quality in and around the city(and the nation in which it is located) by importing all the goodswhose fabrication implies high environmental costs. Thus, goods thatinvolve high levels of energy, water and other resource use andgenerally involve dirty industrial processes with high volumes ofwaste (including hazardous waste) and hazardous conditions for theworkforce, are imported [Swatterthwaite, 1997: 223].

More generally, attention also needs to be given to whether large-scale

inter state or inter regional displacement is occurring. Thus, one could askwhether improvements in air quality in the United States are achievedsimply by the transfer of its dirty industrial production processes topollution havens across the Rio Grande or by exporting waste to theunder-polluted third world (to use World Bank official LawrenceSummers notorious phrase)? The evidence on such macro trends is ofcourse extremely hard to map and is contested. This of course is not simplybecause the least reliable records of environmental indicators can be foundin the developing world. However, Clapp has suggested that one can pointto trends suggesting a certain degree of relocation of extreme hazardousindustries to the South has occurred. She notes, for example, in relation to

Japan (one of the nations that is often see as implementing one of the mostsuccessful ecological modernising strategies) that: there has already beenwidespread documented movement of extremely hazardous industry fromJapan to poorer countries resulting largely from the publics concern overthe environmental effects of these industries [Clapp, 1998: 95].13


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Finally, a third set of general difficulties that needs be examinedconcerns the current relationship between North and South and thepolitics of technology transfers. A further consequence of the globalisationof neo-liberalism is that it has given rise to a new period of heightenedinternational competitiveness between nation states. Such heightenedcompetition coupled with the combined and uneven nature of globaldevelopment [Harvey, 1996] raises questions about the extent to which thegreen industrial revolution is going to have global reach and effect.

For example, given that the affluent world has hardly responded withprofound generosity in helping sub-Sarahan Africa, India or China deal withchronic but entirely resolvable problems that resulting from a lack of cleanwater, basic sanitation, vaccinations etc., are there any grounds for believinga demand for rapid clean development of the South will be met withanymore urgency? For Redclift [2000] the very structuring of the currentworld economy ensures that disincentives are presently at work giving rise

to such outcomes. As he notes:

the transition to cleaner technology in the South is not encouragedby most major economic agencies of the Northern, industrialisedeconomies, whose efforts (in so far as they are geared to ecologicalmodernisation) are focused on gaining for themselves the marketadvantages conferred by higher environmental standards in tradableproducts. They have an interest in nottransferring advanced, cleaner,more energy efficient technologies to the South [Redclift, 2000: 158].

Indeed, of the current NorthSouth technology transfers that areoccurring, Clapp argues a distinct tendency is present for multinational

corporation presently to provide clean up technologies rather than cleantechnologies. Thus, at present it would appear multinational companies areprimarily providing technologies to help recover contaminated sites afterthe event rather than exporting clean technologies which avoid thegeneration of hazardous wastes in the first place [Clapp, 1998].

The central problem for the South, as Redclift notes, is that the unevennature of development ensures that for most developing countries theincentives to pursue lower energy intensities at present are negligiblecompared to the potential economic benefits of providing dirty (andfrequently unsafe and unhealthily) employment. From the perspective ofmany Southern nations then:

It is by no means clear that sustainable development should be givenprecedence over achieving increased economic growth Posed as aconflict between intra-generational equity, and inter-generationalequity, most developing countries are more likely to choose to reduce


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the inequalities in the present global economic system, rather thanmake sacrifices to achieve gains for future affluent generations (in theNorth) [Redclift, 2000: 159].

Beyond the viability or otherwise of the political economy of thisproject, however, a final series of questions could be raised in relation to theunderstanding of technology that is demonstrated in this project.

Opening Up the Black Box: From Green Technological Determinism

to an Informed Politics of Eco-Technology

There is a tendency in both Factor Fourand Natural Capitalism to treattechnology as a black box to use Pinch and Bikers term [Bijker, Hughesand Pinch, 1987]. That is, technological innovation, development anddiffusion are viewed as processes that occur autonomous from politics,

cultural life and social relations. Essentially, embracing something of awhig view of technological innovation, as we have seen, the Factor Fourrevolution is presented as inevitable and when it comes, sociallyunproblematic. This is so because it is reasoned that the best technologies(that is, the most efficient and profitable) will win out. A basic problem withthis claim, however, is that it comes close to providing a rather simpleinversion of technological determinism, that is, a green technologicaldeterminism. Such an approach clearly stands at odds with much of theresearch that has emerged out of the history, philosophy and sociology oftechnology of late [Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987; Winner, 1986;

Mackenzie and Wajcman et al., 1999; Feenberg, 1995, 1999].

One central weakness of this Whig view of technological developmentis the failure to recognise as a huge array of case studies in the socialstudies of technology have now fairly conclusively demonstrated [Bijkerand Law, 1992; Mackenzie and Wajcman et al., 1999] that technologicalchoices are to a largely degree undetermined. Successful technical designsdo need to respect technical principles. Beyond this though it is often thecase that several different designs can achieve the same or similar objectivesleaving no compelling technical reason to support one rather than the other.A consequences of the under-determination of technology is that the finaldecisions between alternatives ultimately depends on the fit between themand the interests and beliefs of the various groups that influence the design

process [Feenberg, 1995: 4].The point is not to deny that technologies, when subsequentlydeveloped, cannot have any intrinsic properties. Technological innovationssuch as the rise of ecotechnology do open up a new series of affordanceswhich can enable/constrain subsequent social action [Hutchby, 2001]. But


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what is important is to recognise that technological design, diffusion anddevelopment is not adequately viewed as an a-social process of unilinerprogression but rather a negotiated achievement [Feenberg, 1995: 4], amulti-centred affair between numerous social actors such as owners ofbusiness, customers, political leaders and government bureaucrats. Suchgroups wield influence by proffering or withholding resources, defining thepurposes of devices they require, fitting them into technical arrangements totheir own benefit, imposing new directions on existing technical means[Feenberg, 1954: 4]. What relevance do these observations have ourdiscussion of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism though? The socialstudies of technology hold out two important lessons for advocates of agreen industrial revolution.

The first point is essentially negative. Notably, it draws attention to thefact that even if all the obstacles to a green industrial revolution posed bythe structuring of the current political economy are addressed if there are

not forces to make things differently the type of eco-technological and eco-industrial reorganisation that triumphs could simply serve and reinforce thepatterns of interest of dominant groups. A neo-liberal version of the greenindustrial revolution could simply give rise to eco-technologies and formsof industrial reorganisation that are perfectly compatible with extendingsocial control, military power, worker surveillance and the broaderrepressive capacities of dominant groups and institutions. It might even bethat a corporate dominated green industrial revolution would simply ensurethat employers have smart buildings which not only give energy back tothe national grid but allow for new solar powered employee surveillancetechnologies. What of a sustainable military-industrial complex that uses

green warfare technologies that kill human beings without destroyingecosystems? To what extent might a northern dominated green industrialrevolution simply ensure that the South receives ecotechnologies thatprimarily express Northern interests (for example, embedding relations ofdependency rather than of self management and autonomy?). In short then,a green industrial revolution could simply give rise to new forms of greengovernmentality [Darier et al., 1999].

The second, more positive insight that can be derived from technologystudies is that contra the simplistic understanding of technology thatunderpins technophobic ideologies, this result is far from inevitable. Thereis no inherent reason why technological development need give rise to

technocracy. The history and sociology of technology does not simplyprovide us with gloomy reasons to embrace Luddism. Rather, this literaturealso demonstrates that opportunities can arise at critical conjuncturalmoments to reshape the direction of technological development or criticallyreappropriate technologies and technocultures for different uses [Penley and


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Ross, 1991].14 A sceptic could respond to this observation that suchconjunctural moments are infrequent, and the outcomes of such strugglesare weighted in favour of powerful groups. This maybe so, yet it is this verypossibility that has led figures such as Feenberg and Winner and morerecently Beck to argue that if undemocratic design procedures and thebroader foreclosing of public debate over technological innovation can havemassive consequences for society at large, there is a greater need than everfor the whole series of questions surrounding technology, technologicalchange and innovation to move from the backroom to the centre stage of areconstituted public sphere.

Conclusion: Alternative Modernities

One of the striking features of reading Factor FourandNatural Capitalismis that these texts together sharply bring home that at the beginning of the

twenty-first century, the question of technology has increasinglyconverged with the question of nature on the centre stage of environmentaldebate. Yet two distinctly inadequate cultural framings of the discussionwould seem currently to predominate in public discussions. As Feenbergnotes, we are increasingly encouraged either to blindly accept the claims fortechnologies developed under existing social relations or uncompromisinglyto reject their perceived dystopian power [Feenberg, 1995].

A reinvigorated technological determinism surely stands alongside neo-liberalism as the dominant ideology of our day. Endlessly maintaining thatcurrent technological change (like the market) is a neutral phenomenon thatoccurs beyond politics, history, culture or human agency, a constant theme of

elite public discourse is that society must passively bend to its will (whetherthe it is the rise of informationalism, genetic modification, the return ofnuclear energy, nanotechnology). Working under the guarded threat thatsuch technological innovation is essential for sustaining our internationalcompetitiveness, technological determinists/high modernists assume thatsimply asserting the self evidence of Progress will ensure that highmodernity will march and all but fools, naves or the irrational will follow. AsBeck has noted, the curiously de-politicised virtue of change unstoppableand uncontrollable thus becomes the central social law of contemporary timeswhich all must either submit, adapt or face social irrelevance or economicdemise [Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994: 26]. Resistance is indeed futile

because human destiny is fulfilled by passively ceding control to others.The increasingly troubled response to this development, however, seems

to believe that the only manner in which the instrumentalisation andmarketisation of social life and nature can be resisted is through jettisoningmodernity. Resistance in this discourse takes the form of persistently


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flagging the downside of scientific and technological innovation orembracing safety, caution, natural limits and the politics of nostalgia. Itcan also develop via warnings of the consequences of dabbling in nature,gropings for a natural order, to the claim that the whole of the enlightenmenttradition itself now needs to be abandoned.

Despite the huge emotional and political power of both these discourses,there are increasing reasons to believe that both these responses areprofoundly inadequate and intellectually in a state of internaldecomposition.

In an age when the cultural logic of twenty-first century informationalcapitalism [Castells, 2000a, 1997, 2000b] appears to be best grasped asreflexive rather than post modernity [Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994], thesand beneath the feet ofhigh modernity appears ever more unstable. Highmodernists face the basic dilemma that Progress cannot be coherentlyasserted as a broad social aim without answering the questions: progress of

what, for whom, developed in whose interests and born with whatexternalities?

Equally though, those who would seek to escape modernity throughreconciliation with the pristine, edenic first nature of physical and bioticprocesses face their own difficulties. As ecologists such as Daniel Botkinhave noted, the desire to appeal to a violated natural order as an anchor in asea of social change emerges at exactly the time when a historicised modernscience of ecology with its emphasis on ecological change, disequilibria andthe disharmonies of nature, appears to have decisively problematised allsuch ideas [Botkin, 1990; Botkin, Quammen, McPhee, Gould and Margulis,2000]. Environmental historians such as William Cronon have revealed justhow much our most pristine landscapes have persistently born the imprintof human agency. Moreover, if we consider Haraways celebration ofhybridity or Latours fascination with the emergence of quasi-objects andactants, rigid Durkheimian distinctions between society and naturewould seem increasingly problematic. Indeed, perhaps Wark is perhapscorrect to suggest that in our emerging network societies [Castells, 2000a],the second nature of cities, roads and harbours, of skyscrapers, gardensand neatly preserved wilderness national parks is being progressivelyoverlaid with a twenty-first century third nature of information flows andhybridities, of informational ecologies seeping through older territories andensuring that the natural, the social and the technical become progressivelyentangled (Wark quoted in Smith [1996]).

Ecological romantics thus in the twenty-first century are left with thebasic difficulty that saving nature cannot become a broad social objectivewithout answering the questions: what nature are we saving and whosenature, defined by whom and with what authority? [Smith; 1990; 1996;Katz, 1998].15


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The central problem is that both high modernism and ecologicalromanticism ultimately provide distinctly inadequate philosophies fornavigating through our contemporary techno-cultures and technologicalnatures [Lash, 2001]. Both of these positions persistently simplify thechoices that exist at any one moment. Both of these broad cultural attitudesto technology (technophobia/technophilia) not only de-socialicise and de-historise technology but also foreclose the possibility that throughreappropriation, recuperation and democratisation, the destructive dynamicsembodied in the current neo-liberal production of nature and technologycould be transcended in favour of building alternative techno-cultures[Penley and Ross, 1991] or fashion alternative productions of nature[Smith, 1990, 1996]. A common fatalism ensures that either utter resistanceor blind embrace of existing arrangements constitute the only options.

One of the most striking features of the rise ofFactor FourandNaturalCapitalism is that these texts further contribute to the now widely

recognised series of disruptions that are occurring in this discussion. If weconsider the work of Amory Lovins and his co-workers alongside the riseof industrial ecology in engineering, Ken Yeangs advocacy of bioclimaticgreen skyscrapers in architecture, Jules Prettys claims for the possibilitiesfor high yield low labour sustainable agriculture in agroecology, DonnaHaraways ecofeminist celebration of the cyborg metaphor or even (dare itbe suggested) Clare Cockcrofts advocacy of pollution reducing sustainablegenetic modification, the lines of debate are increasingly blurred. Suchdevelopments serve as an awkward reminder than even under presentcircumstances, the manner in which energy is produced, productionorganised or transport developed is not simply given. Alternatives exist,

modernities are plural and active human agents (albeit working in structuralconditions not of their own choosing) could make choices over which pathsare taken.

Contra Weber and Foucault, there is no reason why the rise oftechnocracy should be seen as an inevitable outcome of socio-eco-technological change. If the aspiration for ecological rationality could becombined with a humanist project defined by a confident, empoweredtechno-literate citizenry and institutions which encourage and expressedself-critical rationality [Bookchin, 1990; Dryzek, 1987; Benhabib, 1992;Plumwood, 1998] Factor FourandNatural Capitalism might simply bereappropriated for rather different ends.


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NOTES

1. Broadly positive reviews of this project can be found in both left-leaning publications suchas The Nation [Greider, 2000] and staunch defenders of the existing order such as The

Economist(1998, 1999).

2. Research programmes in industrial ecology are currently flourishing at MIT, Yale, Stanfordand the Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA and at European technical universitiessuch as Imperial, Lund, Leiden, Gratz, Vienna, Trondheim, Delft amongst other places. TheJournal for Industrial Ecology and the Journal of Clean Production are central arenas wheredebate in this area is currently unfolding.

3. For optimistic assessments of the future of renewable energy see the Global EnvironmentalFacilitys recent upbeat report, Promoting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: GEFClimate Change Projects and Impacts June 2000 and Seth Dunn,Micropower[World Watch

Institute, 2000]. Possibilities that green technological developments could ensure a halt in therise of green house gases is a feature of the IPCCs recent Climate Change 2001: Mitigation(see www.ipcc.ch). Dennis Anderson, Professor of Energy Policy and Technology atImperial College London, would seem to reflect the growing consensus on renewables moregenerally as he notes: The main question no longer relates to technological feasibility but tocost, of which the high costs of storage in the case of several renewable energy forms areespecially critical as he notes, there is there is a growing consensus in industry and amongst

many academic scientists and engineers) that the worlds energy demands could be met in alow carbon future. A scenario of low carbon emissions has been shown to be entirelyconsistent with both developing countries achieving economic growth and rich countriescontinuing to increase their levels of affluence [Anderson, 2000]. Indeed, the Shell Oilscenario is that by 2060 the world will be getting 50 per cent of its energy from renewablesources (quoted in Anderson [ibid.]).

4. The concept of ecological rationality and democratic rationality used throughout thispaper clearly suggest a debt to critical theory and requires further explication. This articlefollows Dryzeks pioneering approach [1987] to the concept of ecological rationalitydeveloped more recently by Plumwood [1998], but with some adjustments. Drawing fromMannheim, Dryzek argues ecological rationality is best seen as a form of functionalrationality. To describe an organisational structure as functionally rational means first andforemost, that its organisation is such to consistently and effectively promote and producesome value. In this respect, he argues ecological rationality is concerned with: thecapacity of ecosystems consistently and effectively to promote the good of human life

support what one is interested in is the capacity of human systems and natural systems incombination to cope with human induced problems [Dryzek, 1997: 25]. The concept ofecological rationality is thus clearly at variance with ecocentric anti-humanism, informed bythe belief that nature knows best or that human intervention in ecosystems should be keptto a minimum. As Dryzek correctly notes: Nature knows best entails an excessively dismaloutlook Ecological rationality suggests that non-intervention in natural systems isuntenable. While man can destroy the productive, protective, and waste assimilativecapacities of eco-systems, he is also quite capable of creating and sustaining a stable yetproductive sub-climax [Dryzek, 1987: 36]. However, the manner in which Dryzek drawsfrom Eugene Odums ecosystems ecology to formulate his account of ecological rationalityis not without problems in so far as Odums ecology has been substantially challenged overrecent years by a more discordant, dynamic view of ecosystems typified by the work ofDaniel Botkin [1990]. In this respect, ecological rationality is reformulated in this article asthe capacity of institutions to correct tendencies to damage or reduce human life-supportsystems and the capacity to give rise to ecological innovations which allow human societies

to flourish in the face of dynamic change. A ecologically rational society would besustainable to the extent that its corrective and innovative capacities enable it to makeconsistently good decisions that maintain its ecological relationships [Plumwood, 1998].The term democratic rationality is used in this article to refer to Benhabibspostmetaphysical reformulation of Habermass communicative rationality along moreagonistic lines [Benhabib, 1992].


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5. For examples of this literature see amongst others: Benton [1994]; Braun and Castree[1998]; Dryzek [1987]; Haila and Levins [1992]; Harvey [1996].

6. It does also need to be recognised, moreover, that neither Factor Four nor NaturalCapitalism are as innocent of this issue as some critics have inferred. For example, asHawkens, Lovins and Lovins explicitly state without a fundamental rethink of the structure

and the reward system of commerce, narrowly focused eco-efficiency could be a disaster forthe environment overwhelming resource savings with even larger growth in the productionof the wrong products, produced by the wrong processes, at the wrong scale and deliveredusing the wrong business models [Hawken et al., 1999: x].

7. BP may have based their new image on Die Grunens sunflower, gone beyond petroleumand their chief executive may well have give a Reith lecture on sustainable development overrecent times. Greenpeaces recent comment though, thatBP spent more on this image changein 2000 than they did on their whole renewable energy programme in 1999 needs to born inmind. See http://www.greenpeace.org.uk for further information on this. Muttitt and Mariott[2001: 51] have also argued that if we consider that BP plan to grow its renewable businessat a rate of 2030 per cent a year this would ensure that renewable energy production wouldmatch oil and gas in 1,250 years time!

8. For example, it is pointed out that the fact that many businesses insist on a 1.9 year paybackfor investment in energy saving, that is, a rate of return of more than 50 per cent ensures thatpotentially profitable investments in resource efficiency technologies are not made.

9. It is interesting in this respect that one can find persistent contractions in this project betweenrhetoric and reality. Thus in relation to the spread of the green hyper-car, we are told at onepoint that this is gaining its momentum not from regulatory mandates, taxes, or subsidiesbut rather from new unleashed forces of advanced technology, consumer demands,competition and entrepreneurship [Hawken et al., 1999: 20]. The rest of this chapter is thendevoted to arguing that a range of government-guided interventions in the market will benecessary to shape a viable context for the cars emergence.

10. Hawken, Lovins and Lovins suggest that taxation should be shifted away from labour andincome and towards taxing resources use with the end goal of achieving zero taxation onemployees. Taxing environmental bad has become a popular fiscal strategy of late.Extending these ideas, however, in such an extreme fashion would certainly produceinegalitarian and socially regressive outcomes.

11. As H. Patricia Hynes notes concerning the US National polls conducted since the 1950sshow no increase in the percentage of people who report being very happy, despite the factthat people now purchase almost twice the number of consumer goods and services they did

in the 1950s. Time spent enjoying two of the classic sources of happiness social relationsand leisure has diminished as people work more to purchase more durable, packaged,rapidly obsolete, non vital goods and services [Hynes, 1999: 194].

12. The point here of course is not to accept the hyperglobalisers position in this debate. Hirstand Thompsons sceptical critique of the hyperglobalisers [1999] offers an important andsalutary critique of much of the more extreme claims about the death of the nation state. Itwould seem evident that much of the hyperglobalist literature does downplay the fact that itwas nation-states such as the USA and UK which played and still play a central role instructuring and supporting the current form of globalisation in a neo-liberal direction. Thehyperglobalist position can also endure a fatalism which ignores the significant differentpatterns of public spending that can still be found between different forms of liberalcapitalism. It would seem important not to move from this to the equally untenable positionthat nothing has changed in the global political economy. As transformationalists haveargued [Held et al., 1999], there are subtle gradations of emphasis in this debate. Thus, oneconomic globalisation, the exchange between Hirst/Thompson and Perraton is instructive

[Holden, 2000]. More generally, it needs to be recognised that the sceptical critique ofglobalisation has not engaged as yet with the much broader cultural and technologicaltransformations that are highlighted by Castells [2000a, 1997, 2000b] as central to theemergence of globalisation more broadly.

13. Additional complexities are added to this discussion, moreover, when it is recogniseddisplacement can occur not simply across time and space, but also across media. Notably, for


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example, polluted water can be treated through extracting toxic chemicals from the sewage,yet this can still leave toxic sludge for which there is no good disposal treatment [Dryzek,1987: 1819].

14. For example, if we take the internet, despite the fact that this technology had its origins inthe US Defense Departments desire to develop a communications technology that could

survive a Soviet invasion, Castells [2000a: 4551] reminds us of how libertarian utopiancounter-cultural currents played a central role in reshaping and redirecting this technologytowards more open and accessible ends.

15. Indeed, it is the refusal of some currents of ecological activism to confront this issue that liesat the root of Northern eco-imperialism as Katz [1998] and the other contributors toBraum and Castree [1998] have demonstrated.

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