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by neo-Malthusianism and sometimes in remarkable alliances with neo-Marxists
(cf. York and Rosa, 2003), blame an EM perspective for the neglect of quantities,
not in the last place population growth and ever growing consumption quantities.
And post-modernists, such as Ingolfur Blühdorn (2000), argue that ecology is just
the last modernist storyline in a post-modern world that does no longer allow such
frames in making sense of contemporary developments. Consequently, EM perspec-
tives are blamed to be overly optimistic/naïve, not showing environmental reforms
and/or ill-equipped for 'real' radical and structural changes of the modern order
towards sustainability. It is not so much that these objections are completely incor-
rect. From their starting points and the basic premises of these schools of thought,
the points raised against ecological modernisation are internally logic, consistent
and coherent. But their claims are too narrow, limited and one-sided, when they
claim that no environmental reform can be witnessed and refuse to interpret any-
thing new under the sun as long as we continue to have capitalism, population
growth or modernity. While EM scholars would not deny that in various locations,
practices and institutions environmental deterioration is still continuing and even
prevailing, they object to the conclusion of these critics that no environment-induced
transformation can be identifi ed in contemporary modern societies.
Third and fi nally, there is a category of comments and debates, which are less
easy either incorporated or put aside if we want to analyse and understand envi-
ronmental reform in late modern society. These issues have to do with the nation-
state or national society centredness of EM, the strong separation between the
natural/physical and the social in ecological modernisation, and the continuing
conceptual differentiation in state, market and civil society actors and institutions.
Here it is especially the changing character of modern society - especially through
processes of globalisation - that makes that new, early twenty-fi rst century environ-
mental reform dynamics are not always easily fi tting ecological modernisation con-
ceptualisations of the 1990s. This is not too dissimilar to the fact that the
environmental reform dynamics of the 1990s did not fully fi t the conceptualisations
of the 1970s environmental reform studies.
New horizons of Ecological Modernisation Debates
It is particular the latter category of debates and criticism that is challenging current
EM perspectives. In this last section we want to explore four innovations and chal-
lenges EM studies are facing at the moment, following among others these debates,
to turn fi nally to the question whether we are entering a fourth phase of ecological
modernisation, or alternative we are in need of a new, fundamentally different per-
spective on environmental reform.
With the wider attention in the social sciences to the role of citizen-consumers
in social development and a stronger focus on consumption in sustainability studies,
a growing interest among EM scholars can be witnessed in how citizen-consumers
(can) contribute to environmental reforms. While there is wide consensus that the
conventional attitude-behaviour models are no longer adequate, various innovative
citizen-consumer oriented approaches and conceptualisations are at the moment
under construction: Micheletti's political consumerism, Spaargaren's social practices
model, Anheier's global civil society studies, etc. With increasing attention to civil
society and citizen-consumers in environmental reform, the assessment of their
role is also severely under debate, ranging between captive consumers, responsible
