Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The strongest or most radically ecological notion of ecological moderniza-
tion will often stand in opposition to industrial modernity's predominantly
instrumental relationship to nature as exploitable resource. Recognition that
overproduction - the use of material resources beyond regional and global
ecological capacities - must cease because of the threat of imminent ecological
collapse does not allow for the self-serving gradualism of the weak forms of
ecological modernization.
(1996: 495)
The 'strong' ecological modernizers feel there has been a general decline in the
value and probity of industrial progress and seek to develop new ecological modernities
based on human and environmental rights, social learning and a critical reflexivity
that accords effectively with various, often weaker, notions of sustainable development
that seek to provide a greener face to capitalist development without altering its
fundamental trajectory. Thus, one key issue of contention between weak and strong
EM is whether capitalism is able to reform or reorganize itself and be sustainable.
Mol and Spaargaren suggest that:
mainstream modernization theorists interpret capitalism neither as an essential
precondition for, nor as the key obstruction to, stringent or radical environ-
mental reform. They focus instead on redirecting and transforming 'free market
capitalism' in such a way that it less and less obstructs, and increasingly con-
tributes to, the preservation of society's sustenance base in a fundamental/
structural way.
(2000: 23)
Whatever the issues between the weak and the strong advocates, EM has succeeded
in placing the environment more firmly on government, business, community and
industrial agendas. However, as Mol and Spaargaren (2000) also point out, EM
differs from radical ecocentrists in two significant ways: 'EM does not give environ-
mental objectives an undisputed priority over other societal objectives. Radical
proposals for environmental improvement do not automatically entail radical societal
change in the sense promoted by ecocentrists.'
York and Rosa (2003: 274) are highly sceptical about whether current trends in
institutional change and economic growth will enable societies to become more
sustainable. EM theory needs to go beyond being largely reactive, to initiate processes
leading to ecological transformation, harnessing green business models that impact
lightly on the Earth, and energy and resource use that is efficient and effective:
EM theory suggests the possibility that inherent in the process of late
modernization are self-referential mechanisms - such as the need to internalize
environmental impacts in order to ensure future production inputs - that have
the potential to lead to ecological sustainability. It argues for the potential
of attaining sustainability from within - a greening of 'business as usual' -
thereby avoiding such challenging alternatives as radical structural or value
changes in society. The pivotal question, then, is the extent to which such
expectations are justified.