Damian White A Green Industrial Revolution

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Environmental Politics
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A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

D.F. White Available online: 08 Sep 2010
To cite this article: D.F. White (2002): A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age, Environmental Politics, 11:2, 1-26 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/714000603
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A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

DAMIAN FINBAR WHITE
Downloaded by [Harvard College] at 10:12 10 November 2011
In declaring that the twenty-first century could be defined by a new green industrial revolution, Factor Four and Natural Capitalism suggests that an increasingly pronounced technological turn is occurring in the environmental debate. Yet, how credible is this project as a whole? While hampered by managerialist and technologically reductionist premises, this paper nevertheless suggests this ecomodernist project deserves careful scrutiny. However, the extent to which the political narrative which frames Factor Four and Natural Capitalism is internally consistent is examined. Whether the emerging spatial and temporal geography of a neo-liberal global political economy is compatible with this project is considered. Finally, the wisdom (and desirability) of leaving it up to business interests to dominate and define sustainable technological innovation is evaluated.
The recent publishing of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism adds weight to the notion that important shifts are currently occurring in the environmental debate. Informed by a central premise that if resource productivity was increased by a factor of four, the world would enjoy twice the wealth that is currently available, whilst simultaneously halving the stress placed on our natural environment [VonWeizscker, Lovins and Lovins, 1998: xv], Factor Four makes a bold case for the argument that technological innovation, aspirations for better living and ecological concerns could become perfectly compatible partners. Expanding on this theme in Natural Capitalism
Damian Finbar White (damianwhite@cwcom.net) is a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Cultural and Innovation Studies, University of East London. Earlier versions of this article were 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; Department of 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 and Society Research Group, International Sociological Association, University of Cambridge, 5 July 2001. He would like to thank participants at these gatherings as well as Ted Benton, Godfrey Boyle, Neil Curry, Andrew Dobson, Sarah Friel, Horace Herring, Arthur Mol, Eamon Molloy, Geoff Robinson, Andrew Rudin, Ariel Salleh, Ernest von Weizscker and Richard Yorke for feedback and encouragement on earlier drafts of this article. Environmental Politics, Vol.11, No.2, Summer 2002, pp.126
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I T I C S
[Hawken, Lovins and Lovins, 1999], the authors offer a broader agenda, based on new energy and resource efficiency technologies, waste elimination and clean production strategies and the development of a service and flows economy that is seen as laying the basis for nothing less than a new green industrial revolution. Drawing from Amory Lovins own pioneering work in eco-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 in environmental design, engineering and architecture [Wines, 2000], the end result is a stimulating but odd synthesis. For those used to engaging in the political end of green discourses, these texts make for disconcerting reading. In contrast to the problem-oriented and technologically pessimist tone that has dominated much environmentalist 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 abandoning affluence [Trainer, 1985], it is boldly declared that efficiency does not mean curtailment, discomfort or privatisation [VonWeizscker et al., 1998: xxii]. Unashamedly co-opting the language of Enlightenment optimism, it is maintained that progress can be redefined in ecologically more benign ways. Indeed, rather than finishing off capitalism, a transition to an ecological society is seen as potentially making a profit for business. Is this project either viable or desirable though? Some Initial Evaluations For some, the very use of the term Natural Capitalism may suggest that this project is so evidently ideological with its clumsy reification of capitalism that further investigation is not required. Others who initially stray further may be dissuaded by the manner in which these texts deploy a rhetorical style more common to popular management literature than academic texts. For green texts, though, it is worth noting that both Factor Four and Natural Capitalism received a remarkably high profile reception on publication.1 Receiving warm reviews from both left and right-leaning publications, these texts went on to attract the attention of US and European political elites while the language and concepts used by Factor Four rapidly proliferated into the discourses of UN and EU environmental bodies and research councils. Sceptics who subscribe to the (not unreasonable) maxim that there is an inverse relationship between the elite popularity of an idea and its social or ecological usefulness will of course hardly be swayed by such endorsement. A careful reading of these texts, though, suggests further tensions and inconsistencies can be found.
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A GREEN I NDUSTRI AL REVOLUTI ON?
For example, Factor Four and Natural Capitalism are certainly orientated towards crafting a discourse which appeals to elite policy makers, corporate managers and investors. Yet, whether we are considering the huge amount of energy wastage that is demonstrated as an endemic feature of advanced capitalist societies, the fact that 80 per cent of products are discarded after a single use or that 99 per cent of the original materials used in the production of goods made in the USA become waste after six week of sales [VonWeizscker et al., 1998: xx] these texts also provide a powerful critique of existing arrangements. Outlining the huge waste of energy and materials, of time and effort that mark current forms of production, distribution and exchange, it is convincingly argued that production processes in advanced capitalist societies are massively inefficient [Hawken et al., 1999: 8]. Working through the array of green innovations that could significantly improve energy, materials and transport productivity, an equally interesting case is made that much of the waste, pollution, environmental degradation and risk generation currently produced by contemporary capitalism is simply unnecessary. Lovins and his co-workers argue that if social and eco-industrial reorganisation was coupled with the implementation of industrial ecology and broader forms of sustainable technological innovation, massive opportunities could now exist for reducing environmental impacts. Moreover, evidence is provided that the range of green innovations detailed in these texts are far from hypothetical projects. Rather, endless examples are provided of new energy, material or transport productivity that are at various stages of the research and development process of major US and European companies or on the market. Such developments converge with evidence that research programmes in the applied and even the hard sciences in the academy are increasingly taking a green turn with the rise and institutional consolidation in elite universities of research programmes in industrial ecology, environmental engineering, and even green chemistry.2 A series of reports and commentaries emerged in the wake of these texts that confirmed the growing technical viability of large-scale shifts towards renewable energy, decarbonising and resource productivity technologies.3 Indeed, if we consider these developments alongside the fact that the EU has committed itself to shifting 20 per cent of energy production in Europe towards renewables by 2020 or the growing literature which suggests ecological modernisation strategies are consolidating and spreading outside their traditional base [Mol and Sonnenfeldt, 2000; Mol, 2001], it could be argued that structural conditions are emerging to facilitate this development further. Perhaps the most striking aspect of these texts, though (if frustratingly undeveloped), is found in the suggestion that opportunities now exist for
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transforming current zero-sum views of the relationship between environment protection and development. Demonstrating a sensitivity to the extent to which aspects of the UNCED Rio agreement in 1992 were seen by many in the South as a Northern attempt to frame the global environmental agenda [Agarwal and Narain, 1991; Redclift, 2000], the Factor Four/Natural Capitalism project is presented as offering a new way forward. Thus it is claimed that sustainable technological innovation coupled with institutional and productive reorganisation could ensure that even the gravest world-wide distribution problems can be solved without any part of the world having to accept significant sacrifices in well being [VonWeizscker et al., 1998: 268]. A principal ecological duty of the North should be not only to embark on a Factor Four transition as soon as possible but to do all it can to facilitate both increased prosperity and the efficiency revolution 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 radical ecological orthodoxies. These texts also suggest that a technological turn will increasingly define the environmental debate in the twenty-first century. Is this turn compelling or normatively attractive? This article seeks to investigate this issue. We begin by considering immediate weaknesses in this project and the broader discussion it has generated to date. Following this, an attempt is made to open up a critical yet also self-consciously recuperative engagement with this project. Finally, some thoughts are offered on how a critical social theory of the environment 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. Questions remain though as to whether the success of this project might be achieved at the expense of, rather than in line with, the expansion of democratic rationality and social justice.4 Evident Weaknesses and Broader Criticism of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism Even a superficial reading of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism reveals some fairly glaring weaknesses in this project. Concerns could immediately be flagged regarding the manner this project bolsters reductionist currents in the environmental debate. One need not share the suspicion of science and technology apparent in deep ecological quarters to recognise how scientism and a narrowly focused technological reductionism can systematically detract attention from the social and political roots of social and ecological problems [Habermas, 1971; Benton, 1994]. Reinforcing recent moves in
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World Bank, OECD and corporate discourses to see sustainable development as a capital exchange process, a high degree of objectification enters into this discussion. In Factor Four and Natural Capitalism nature is reduced to a resource out there to be managed as natural capital and the human subject becomes simply human capital. As Molloy has noted, there is little recognition that the use of this language: open[s] up the possibility of regarding the entire non-human world, genes, bodies, species as instrumentally there for exploitation, appropriation, and accumulation [Molloy, 2000]. The politics that emerge from this project have distinctly managerialist overtones. As Hawkens, Lovins and Lovins state in Natural Capitalism as a broad prescriptive vision: Communities and whole societies need to be managed with the same appreciation for integral design as buildings, the same frugally simple engineering as lean factories, and the same 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 rational design or scientific managerialism. It is also the case that the managerialist caste of this project ensures little awareness is demonstrated of the extent to which there is a long, and now well documented, history of public and environmental health being used as regulatory strategies of social control [Darier, 1999]. Beyond these fairly evident weakness though, this project has encountered more trenchant critics of late of the opinion that this project is far more fundamentally flawed. Thus, deep green critics such as Wolfgang Sachs [1999] have argued that this project is inadequate for failing to deal with the global survival crisis for which evidence is indeed incontestable [Sach, 1999: 47]. It is an agenda of sufficiency, self-limitation and a sense of enoughness that needs to triumph over demands for eco-efficiency and resource productivity. Alternatively, contrarian voices have been keen to assert that this project is merely dealing with environmental problems which are largely fictitious and that the idea we need to increase resource productivity is based on a false sense of limits. Factor Four is thus a project which is against progress and 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 project and its supremely rational utopianism that is its ultimate undoing. Perhaps the central academic debate that these works and the broader factor x discussion have provoked so far, though, has centred around the question of whether the pursuit of eco-efficiency and resource productivity may simply generate multiple rebound effects which unravel any gains made.
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Simultaneously accused then of being too optimistic and too pessimistic, too utopian and too conservative, too rationalistic and not rationalistic enough, it would appear this project has had to negotiate difficult terrain. Is it the case though, as these harsher critics have suggested, that this project is fundamentally misconceived? On Babies and Bath Water Considering the Critics There are grounds for feeling that many of the more trenchant critics of this project are holding positions very bit as problematic as the project they criticise. Both deep green and contrarian critiques of this project are premised on the questionable assumption that global environmental change has to be viewed in terms of the simple choice of catastrophe or cornucopia: Pollyanna or Pangloss. That nearly two decades of research in environmental geography, critical social theory and environmental sociology suggest that environmental degradation is a more complex story marked by massive regional and spatial variations, uncertainty, legislative successes as well as notable failures, continued environmental injustices and well-grounded looming dangers is simply not entertained.5 Both these currents also premise their counter-arguments on deterministic grounds. A desocialised environmental determinism lingers around Sachs advocacy of the virtues of limits and sufficiency. (Surely Lovins Hawken and Lovins are correct here to argue that the point of an ecological project should be about improving the quality of life for all rather than redistributing scarcity [Hawkens et al., 1999: 158]). Equally though, a productive forces determinism underpins the contrarian arguments of Heartfield and Gilliott. The implicit assumption here would appear to be that it is the scale of productive processes and the net throughput of materials that should be regarded as a mark of progress. Based on this reasoning, one would assume that profligacy and waste generation are forward-looking virtues or that the heavy industrial installations of the high industrial revolution are more progressive than anything the new industrialism has to offer(?) More troubling still, both of these interventions are disturbing in the way that they reduce the environment/development question to a further series of binary polarities. Thus, it would appear that for the deep ecological/ contrarian world-views the only choice open to the developing world is simply to accept existing arrangements, reject development or embrace a Victorian phase of dirty industrial development with all its Dickensian misery. No possibilities then for the people of the South to have the option of leap-frog technologies and industrial ecologies which facilitate as fast as is possible a clean transition to a ecological modernity and the information age should this be what they want?
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If we turn to the principal technical objection to this project the rebound effect there is no doubt that well grounded research suggests serious questions could be pressed against the idea that pursuing energy efficiency in itself and under existing socio-economic, political and cultural conditions offers an easy solution to current problems [Brookes, 2000; Rudin, 2000; Owen, 2000; Moezzi, 2000]. Equally though, this discussion can suffer from an excessive fatalism about the inevitability of such effects. Thus, it needs to be recognised that critical questions remain concerning how much, how rapidly, in which sectors and with what manifestations rebounds occur [Schipper, 2000]. Different social, cultural, institutional and political settings would seem to effect the success of energy efficiency programmes [Owen, 2000]. Moreover, a recent summary of the current state of knowledge in the field has argued that a broad consensus emerging amongst energy analysts is that: rebounds are significant but do not threaten 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 Four and Natural Capitalism are marked by techno-hubris and utopian overstatement? Technological determinism is a problem in this project which will be returned to later. However, if it is accepted that a credible ecological project needs to stake its hopes not on a return to the past but on the capacity of modern societies to transcend themselves and enter on a different mode of development from the one which has shaped them up to now [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 Four and Natural Capitalism are marked by a rather static utopian sensibility, However, it would seem grievously misjudged to move from this to dismissing the value of utopian speculation in its entirety. How then might one move this discussion in a different direction? Two issues would seem to provide useful orientating points. First, if this project is technically possible (even in part) and viewed as provisionally desirable, it would seem evident that a progressive critique should explore the political, economic, cultural and social factors that might hold back such a development. Secondly, it clearly needs to be asked if ecological rationality is possible within the context of the given system, to what extent might this be achieved at the expense of democratic rationality, environmental justice and 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 basic changes in the conditions of business. Companies that ignore the message of natural capitalism do so at their peril [Hawken et al., 1999: xiii] In both Factor Four and Natural Capitalism a dominant, business friendly discourse provides the public framing of these texts. Full of rhetoric that emphasises the importance of harnessing the talents of business to solve the worlds deepest environmental problems [Hawken et al., 1999: xiii], constant attempts are made in this dominant discourse to establish the market friendly credentials of this project. Drawing from a neo-classical view of technological change that assumes that firms will choose the technique of production that offers the maximum possible rate of profit, it is maintained that the eco-technological and other changes advocated will occur quite simply because if companies do not introduce they will lose competitive advantage [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: xix; Hawken et al., 1999: xiii]. Something of an inevitablist thesis is cultivated and a smooth compatibility assured between this project and the interests of corporate CEOs. Thus, at certain points, we are informed that this project is neither conservative nor liberal in its ideology [Hawken et al., 1999: 20]. Indeed, even lurching at times towards New Right rhetoric, we are assured that much of this project can be implemented largely in the marketplace, driven by individual choice and business competition, rather than requiring governments to tell everyone how to live [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: xxiii]. A number of questions are clearly left hanging in the air though concerning how this vision of responsible corporate-led greenery is going to come to pass. For example, at numerous points we are assured extensive profits are possible through pursuing Factor Four/Natural Capitalist measures and examples are provided of individual firms that have achieved this. It remains very unclear though just how representative these companies are or how industry-led ecological restructuring might actually work at a broader sectoral level. Certain groupings within sectors of national economies could possibly have a vested interest in pursuing the range of activities advocated by Factor Four and Natural Capitalism. The emerging sustainable technologies companies (which are currently estimated to have created an investment sector of $20 billion), obviously are a case in point. Matters remain 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 automobile sectors). Consideration of the difficulties that are generated by technological lock ins and path dependencies is clearly important here. That is, the manner in which technologies can clearly become embedded in infrastructures and cultural contexts long after they have ceased to be optimal [Elliot, 1997]. Yet, there is clearly the further issue of motivation. One could wonder are such companies going to simply write off possibly billions of dollars of fixed investments because a production process has been deemed ecologically redundant? The Lovinses and their co-workers do point out that this situation is often more fluid than radical critics often allow. Thus, it is noted that many large US and Japanese corporations have been at the forefront of research and development into sustainable technological innovations over recent years (for example, the automobile sector committing over $5 billion between 1993 and 1998 to developing the green or hypercar, Dow Chemicals developing organic solvents and announcing a $1 billion, tenyear environmental investment programme, DuPont and Toyota experimenting with closed loop production processes, etc). Such developments are interesting and serve as a reminder that the question of whether capitalism can internalise its environmental externalities needs to be viewed as an open one [Sandler, 1994]. However, what is not mentioned is that recent studies also suggest that it has been a need to comply with new regulations rather than the mysterious hidden hand of the market that has driven the adoption of clean technology in many industries [Clayton, Spinardi and Williams, 2000]. It would also seem to be the case that industry lobbying groups have sought to discourage exactly this type of regulation by focusing on energy users rather than producers and emphasising voluntary action [Muttitt and Marriott, 2001]. More pressing still, what also remains unclear is the actual percentage of the overall company turnover that is being diverted into green business ventures.7 What is interesting about these texts, however, is that underneath the glossy and reassuring surface, a rather different second narrative starts to emerge. Notably, after all the various protestations of market purity, a subordinate discourse slowly begin to hint that there might be rather more problems between contemporary capitalism (particularly in its current red in tooth and claw neo-liberal mode) and the environment than their corporate readership might want to hear. Thus, after endless celebrating win-win scenarios and new ecobusinesses opportunities, it is conceded that a central failing of industrial (that is, contemporary) capitalism is that it neglects to assign any value to the largest stock of capital that it depends on notably the ecosystem. It is recognised 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 conceded that existing capitalism relies on accounting systems and incentive structures that actively encourage the liquidation of natural capital. Quite rapidly after embarking down this line of thought Natural Capitalists start to list a whole range of structural deficiencies of market societies that are seen as giving rise to ecologically irrational outcomes: from the chronic short term-ism that governs the movement of investment capital8 to the destructive potential of free trade [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: 282]; from the 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 owners have in preserving existing structures [Von Weizcker et al., 1998: xxvi]. What solutions exist then for dealing with these dilemmas? When the discussion turns in this direction, both Factor Four and Natural Capitalism begin to suggest that a range of much deeper changes are necessary for a functioning green market economy. Thus, drawing from standard themes of ecological economics, it is maintained that markets need to be reconfigured so that prices reflect the true price of goods (factoring in their environmental impacts), GDP needs to be changed to an index which would reflect to a much greater degree quality of life issues, and indeed it is argued the whole tax and incentive structure needs to be revised. It is maintained that we need a whole rethinking of urban policy and urban planning to encourage smarter land use stronger neighbourhoods and compact convivial cities [Hawken et al., 1999: 47] to replace anomic and ecologically irrational urban sprawl. Indeed, shading rather dangerously closely to the redgreen end 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 took the lead in demanding just transitions for the workers and communities reliant on unsustainable production processes [Hawken et al., 1999: 1]. What is interesting about this turn in the discussion (and somewhat at variance with the first discourse) is that the sum total of these changes suggests that free-market capitalism needs to be transformed rather more than the surface self image of this project admits.9 Indeed, creating the conditions of possibility for a viable ecological modernist project would appear crucially to depend on a re-legitimised public sphere and a broader public realm that pursues an interventionist economic policy, a credible industrial policy and intelligent urban planning. If we ignore here some rather questionable ideas about taxation that are floated in Natural Capitalism,10 it could be argued that the actual project the Lovinses and their co-workers end up with would by and large be more accurately entitled Natural Social Democracy than Natural Capitalism.
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Challenges for Green Social Democracy: Homo Consumer as Human Being The discourse of Natural Social Democracy does seem rather more credible than its Natural Capitalist rival. When the discussion turns in this direction it is certainly the case that a series of reforms are advocated in this project which all but the most unthinking dogmatist would recognise as highly desirable. A series of further obstacles, though, need to be examined. One of the ongoing doubts that have been raised about the ecological rationality of free market societies has revolved around the treadmill of production thesis [Schnaiberg, 1980]. It has been maintained that a central anti-ecological tendency of contemporary capitalism is that the very dynamics of the production process ensure it has a distinct tendency to generate 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 belt tightening arguments they make the rather different argument that an ecologically rational society would seek to make products that are long lasting, durable and upgradable. It is thus argued we need to move towards a service and flows economy. The basic idea here is that product durability could be improved by manufacturers becoming less sellers of products and more providing leasing and renting arrangements for services. Mechanisms and incentive structures could be created so that it is manufacturers that are responsible for serving, upgrading and disposing of products. This idea makes good sense and could perhaps play a central role in developing an ecologically rational political economy [Dryzek, 1987]. One could envisage how a service and flows economy might well have theoretical attractions in business-to-business ventures given that renting of accommodation, appliances and equipment is already a well-established part of business culture. As a strategy to make domestic consumption more sustainable though, questions remain as to whether this proposal has fully thought through the complex social, cultural and psychological dynamics that consumption has come to play in the lives of the homo consumer of free market societies. For example, it would seem evident that a desire for ownership of property, goods and resources is still intimately and understandably tied in many advanced capitalist societies with desires for security and autonomy. Current consumption patterns are also clearly linked in complex ways to the preserve and legitimisation of distinction [Bourdieu, 1984], conspicuous consumption as Veblen has observed, the desire for novelty and coping with status anxiety in an increasingly anomic world. Credible elaboration of a viable 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 ecologically irrational outcomes but built-in cultural obsolescence [OConnor, 1990: 12]. Projects that seek to rethink or re-channel consumerism also clearly need to grapple with what can only be called the ideology of consumerism. The point is here not to demonise consumption as Barry has cautioned [Barry, 1999]. (Indeed, it would seem evident that large sections of the world current need to consume more!). But it does seem important to at least recognise as Bookchin argues, that one of the increasing irrationalities of actual existing capitalist societies is the manner in which they are characterised at their core by consumption for the sake of consumption even 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 of capital as a whole, it would seem evident that buy or die or alternatively work and spend have become civic duties of the citizen-consumer of advanced capitalist societies. To seek the transformation of this toward more socially and ecologically rational consumption patterns, to champion the active citizen self over the passive consumer self will require a cultural and political project well beyond anything conceptualised by Factor Four or Natural Capitalism. A Fair and Equitable Green Industrial Revolution in an Age of NeoLiberal Globalisation? The globalisation of neo-liberalism generates further problems in projects seeking to nurture and generalise a green industrial revolution. Three points of tension in particular deserve reflection. First, there is the problem of agency. The extent, depth and historical uniqueness of economic globalisation remains a matter of considerable dispute 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 varying views). Discourses of globalisation need to be handled with additional care 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 macro economic management, two decades and more of global neo-liberalism have 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 that the transition to a green industrial revolution is going to require significant structural economic cultural and political change guided by a strong public presence, this need is emerging exactly at the time when the capacity of single governments to achieve deep-seated structural reforms of this type has become more circumscribed. The growing power and mobility of multinational corporations has clearly increased their exit options and decreased the ability of states to tie capital into national economic or ecoregulatory arrangements. The fluidity and sheer scale of finance markets has reduced the effectiveness of macro economic policies and opened governments who seek to move beyond the Washington consensus to speculative attacks.12 A second area of general difficulties need to be addressed through the new 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 increasingly important manner in which capital deals with crises of over-accumulation is through temporal or spatial displacement. If we relate and slightly adjust these ideas (following Dryzek [1987]) it would seem evident that further problems in addressing environmental questions presently arise from the (increasingly) narrow temporal horizons of global neo-liberalism. Tensions clearly do exist between the temporal horizons of business (often limited to the end of year balance sheet), the horizons of politicians (invariably limited to the electoral cycle) or even the emergence of instantaneous timeless time as a property of informational capitalism [Castells, 2000a] and the much longer temporal horizons or glacial time [Urry, 2000] that many environmental problems need to be addressed within (for example, global warming, biodiversity loss, the disposal of nuclear waste). If we turn to the related issue of the spatial fix, a defining feature of the new global order according to Urry [2000], Castells [2000a] and Harvey [1990, 1996] is the manner in which it has increasingly given rise to various mobilities. An aspect of this has been the much noted growing mobilities of people, ideas, images, capital and objects around the globe and the broader resulting phenomena of time-space compression [Harvey, 1990]. Many of these developments, of course, have been tremendously exciting, liberating and indeed helped generate both a sense of the global environment and perhaps opened possibilities for an alternative democratic globalisation from below. The reverse side of this though has been the greater liquidity and mobility of capital, waste, toxics, hazards and concurrent the growing capacities for spatially shifting ecological degradation. Following this, as Dryzek [1987, 1997] has argued, questions clearly need to be asked concerning the extent to which affluent countries, regions, cities or localities
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embarking on ecological modernisation projects are achieving these ends by transferring their environmental externalities to poor countries, regions, cities or sectors of cities and localities? While much has been made by contrarian thinkers of late about environmental improvements occurring in certain cities, certain sectors of cities or even in advanced states across certain indicators, the question of environmental displacement is rarely mentioned. Yet, within urban areas in the USA, growing evidence accumulated by the US environmental justice movement [Faber et al., 1998,] suggests that displacement of environmental bads from affluent white middle class areas to low income and ethnic neighbourhoods has been an endemic feature of the capitalist production of space, place and nature [Smith, 1990] over the twentieth century in the US. The complex economic geography of environmental displacement occurring between affluent cities in the spaces of flows and poorer 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 can maintain high levels of environmental quality in and around the city (and the nation in which it is located) by importing all the goods whose fabrication implies high environmental costs. Thus, goods that involve high levels of energy, water and other resource use and generally involve dirty industrial processes with high volumes of waste (including hazardous waste) and hazardous conditions for the workforce, 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 ask whether improvements in air quality in the United States are achieved simply by the transfer of its dirty industrial production processes to pollution havens across the Rio Grande or by exporting waste to the under-polluted third world (to use World Bank official Lawrence Summers notorious phrase)? The evidence on such macro trends is of course extremely hard to map and is contested. This of course is not simply because the least reliable records of environmental indicators can be found in the developing world. However, Clapp has suggested that one can point to trends suggesting a certain degree of relocation of extreme hazardous industries 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 most successful ecological modernising strategies) that: there has already been widespread documented movement of extremely hazardous industry from Japan to poorer countries resulting largely from the publics concern over the environmental effects of these industries [Clapp, 1998: 95].13
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Finally, a third set of general difficulties that needs be examined concerns the current relationship between North and South and the politics of technology transfers. A further consequence of the globalisation of neo-liberalism is that it has given rise to a new period of heightened international competitiveness between nation states. Such heightened competition coupled with the combined and uneven nature of global development [Harvey, 1996] raises questions about the extent to which the green industrial revolution is going to have global reach and effect. For example, given that the affluent world has hardly responded with profound generosity in helping sub-Sarahan Africa, India or China deal with chronic but entirely resolvable problems that resulting from a lack of clean water, basic sanitation, vaccinations etc., are there any grounds for believing a demand for rapid clean development of the South will be met with anymore urgency? For Redclift [2000] the very structuring of the current world 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 encouraged by most major economic agencies of the Northern, industrialised economies, whose efforts (in so far as they are geared to ecological modernisation) are focused on gaining for themselves the market advantages conferred by higher environmental standards in tradable products. They have an interest in not transferring advanced, cleaner, more energy efficient technologies to the South [Redclift, 2000: 158]. Indeed, of the current NorthSouth technology transfers that are occurring, Clapp argues a distinct tendency is present for multinational corporation presently to provide clean up technologies rather than clean technologies. Thus, at present it would appear multinational companies are primarily providing technologies to help recover contaminated sites after the event rather than exporting clean technologies which avoid the generation of hazardous wastes in the first place [Clapp, 1998]. The central problem for the South, as Redclift notes, is that the uneven nature of development ensures that for most developing countries the incentives to pursue lower energy intensities at present are negligible compared to the potential economic benefits of providing dirty (and frequently unsafe and unhealthily) employment. From the perspective of many Southern nations then: It is by no means clear that sustainable development should be given precedence over achieving increased economic growth Posed as a conflict between intra-generational equity, and inter-generational equity, most developing countries are more likely to choose to reduce
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the inequalities in the present global economic system, rather than make sacrifices to achieve gains for future affluent generations (in the North) [Redclift, 2000: 159]. Beyond the viability or otherwise of the political economy of this project, however, a final series of questions could be raised in relation to the understanding 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 Four and Natural Capitalism to treat technology as a black box to use Pinch and Bikers term [Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987]. That is, technological innovation, development and diffusion are viewed as processes that occur autonomous from politics, cultural life and social relations. Essentially, embracing something of a whig view of technological innovation, as we have seen, the Factor Four revolution is presented as inevitable and when it comes, socially unproblematic. This is so because it is reasoned that the best technologies (that is, the most efficient and profitable) will win out. A basic problem with this claim, however, is that it comes close to providing a rather simple inversion of technological determinism, that is, a green technological determinism. Such an approach clearly stands at odds with much of the research that has emerged out of the history, philosophy and sociology of technology 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 development is the failure to recognise as a huge array of case studies in the social studies of technology have now fairly conclusively demonstrated [Bijker and Law, 1992; Mackenzie and Wajcman et al., 1999] that technological choices are to a largely degree undetermined. Successful technical designs do need to respect technical principles. Beyond this though it is often the case that several different designs can achieve the same or similar objectives leaving no compelling technical reason to support one rather than the other. A consequences of the under-determination of technology is that the final decisions between alternatives ultimately depends on the fit between them and 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 subsequently developed, cannot have any intrinsic properties. Technological innovations such as the rise of ecotechnology do open up a new series of affordances which can enable/constrain subsequent social action [Hutchby, 2001]. But
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what is important is to recognise that technological design, diffusion and development is not adequately viewed as an a-social process of uniliner progression but rather a negotiated achievement [Feenberg, 1995: 4], a multi-centred affair between numerous social actors such as owners of business, customers, political leaders and government bureaucrats. Such groups wield influence by proffering or withholding resources, defining the purposes of devices they require, fitting them into technical arrangements to their own benefit, imposing new directions on existing technical means [Feenberg, 1954: 4]. What relevance do these observations have our discussion of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism though? The social studies of technology hold out two important lessons for advocates of a green industrial revolution. The first point is essentially negative. Notably, it draws attention to the fact that even if all the obstacles to a green industrial revolution posed by the structuring of the current political economy are addressed if there are not forces to make things differently the type of eco-technological and ecoindustrial reorganisation that triumphs could simply serve and reinforce the patterns of interest of dominant groups. A neo-liberal version of the green industrial revolution could simply give rise to eco-technologies and forms of industrial reorganisation that are perfectly compatible with extending social control, military power, worker surveillance and the broader repressive capacities of dominant groups and institutions. It might even be that a corporate dominated green industrial revolution would simply ensure that employers have smart buildings which not only give energy back to the national grid but allow for new solar powered employee surveillance technologies. What of a sustainable military-industrial complex that uses green warfare technologies that kill human beings without destroying ecosystems? To what extent might a northern dominated green industrial revolution simply ensure that the South receives ecotechnologies that primarily express Northern interests (for example, embedding relations of dependency rather than of self management and autonomy?). In short then, a green industrial revolution could simply give rise to new forms of green governmentality [Darier et al., 1999]. The second, more positive insight that can be derived from technology studies is that contra the simplistic understanding of technology that underpins technophobic ideologies, this result is far from inevitable. There is no inherent reason why technological development need give rise to technocracy. The history and sociology of technology does not simply provide us with gloomy reasons to embrace Luddism. Rather, this literature also demonstrates that opportunities can arise at critical conjunctural moments to reshape the direction of technological development or critically reappropriate technologies and technocultures for different uses [Penley and
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Ross, 1991].14 A sceptic could respond to this observation that such conjunctural moments are infrequent, and the outcomes of such struggles are weighted in favour of powerful groups. This maybe so, yet it is this very possibility that has led figures such as Feenberg and Winner and more recently Beck to argue that if undemocratic design procedures and the broader foreclosing of public debate over technological innovation can have massive consequences for society at large, there is a greater need than ever for the whole series of questions surrounding technology, technological change and innovation to move from the backroom to the centre stage of a reconstituted public sphere.
Conclusion: Alternative Modernities One of the striking features of reading Factor Four and Natural Capitalism is that these texts together sharply bring home that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the question of technology has increasingly converged with the question of nature on the centre stage of environmental debate. Yet two distinctly inadequate cultural framings of the discussion would seem currently to predominate in public discussions. As Feenberg notes, we are increasingly encouraged either to blindly accept the claims for technologies developed under existing social relations or uncompromisingly to reject their perceived dystopian power [Feenberg, 1995]. A reinvigorated technological determinism surely stands alongside neoliberalism as the dominant ideology of our day. Endlessly maintaining that current technological change (like the market) is a neutral phenomenon that occurs beyond politics, history, culture or human agency, a constant theme of elite public discourse is that society must passively bend to its will (whether the it is the rise of informationalism, genetic modification, the return of nuclear energy, nanotechnology). Working under the guarded threat that such technological innovation is essential for sustaining our international competitiveness, technological determinists/high modernists assume that simply asserting the self evidence of Progress will ensure that high modernity will march and all but fools, naves or the irrational will follow. As Beck has noted, the curiously de-politicised virtue of change unstoppable and uncontrollable thus becomes the central social law of contemporary times which all must either submit, adapt or face social irrelevance or economic demise [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 and marketisation of social life and nature can be resisted is through jettisoning modernity. Resistance in this discourse takes the form of persistently
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flagging the downside of scientific and technological innovation or embracing safety, caution, natural limits and the politics of nostalgia. It can also develop via warnings of the consequences of dabbling in nature, gropings for a natural order, to the claim that the whole of the enlightenment tradition 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 are profoundly inadequate and intellectually in a state of internal decomposition. In an age when the cultural logic of twenty-first century informational capitalism [Castells, 2000a, 1997, 2000b] appears to be best grasped as reflexive rather than post modernity [Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994], the sand beneath the feet of high modernity appears ever more unstable. High modernists face the basic dilemma that Progress cannot be coherently asserted as a broad social aim without answering the questions: progress of what, for whom, developed in whose interests and born with what externalities? Equally though, those who would seek to escape modernity through reconciliation with the pristine, edenic first nature of physical and biotic processes face their own difficulties. As ecologists such as Daniel Botkin have noted, the desire to appeal to a violated natural order as an anchor in a sea of social change emerges at exactly the time when a historicised modern science of ecology with its emphasis on ecological change, disequilibria and the disharmonies of nature, appears to have decisively problematised all such ideas [Botkin, 1990; Botkin, Quammen, McPhee, Gould and Margulis, 2000]. Environmental historians such as William Cronon have revealed just how much our most pristine landscapes have persistently born the imprint of human agency. Moreover, if we consider Haraways celebration of hybridity or Latours fascination with the emergence of quasi-objects and actants, rigid Durkheimian distinctions between society and nature would seem increasingly problematic. Indeed, perhaps Wark is perhaps correct to suggest that in our emerging network societies [Castells, 2000a], the second nature of cities, roads and harbours, of skyscrapers, gardens and neatly preserved wilderness national parks is being progressively overlaid with a twenty-first century third nature of information flows and hybridities, of informational ecologies seeping through older territories and ensuring that the natural, the social and the technical become progressively entangled (Wark quoted in Smith [1996]). Ecological romantics thus in the twenty-first century are left with the basic difficulty that saving nature cannot become a broad social objective without answering the questions: what nature are we saving and whose nature, 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 ecological romanticism ultimately provide distinctly inadequate philosophies for navigating through our contemporary techno-cultures and technological natures [Lash, 2001]. Both of these positions persistently simplify the choices that exist at any one moment. Both of these broad cultural attitudes to technology (technophobia/technophilia) not only de-socialicise and dehistorise technology but also foreclose the possibility that through reappropriation, recuperation and democratisation, the destructive dynamics embodied in the current neo-liberal production of nature and technology could 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 resistance or blind embrace of existing arrangements constitute the only options. One of the most striking features of the rise of Factor Four and Natural Capitalism is that these texts further contribute to the now widely recognised series of disruptions that are occurring in this discussion. If we consider the work of Amory Lovins and his co-workers alongside the rise of industrial ecology in engineering, Ken Yeangs advocacy of bioclimatic green skyscrapers in architecture, Jules Prettys claims for the possibilities for high yield low labour sustainable agriculture in agroecology, Donna Haraways ecofeminist celebration of the cyborg metaphor or even (dare it be suggested) Clare Cockcrofts advocacy of pollution reducing sustainable genetic modification, the lines of debate are increasingly blurred. Such developments serve as an awkward reminder than even under present circumstances, the manner in which energy is produced, production organised or transport developed is not simply given. Alternatives exist, modernities are plural and active human agents (albeit working in structural conditions not of their own choosing) could make choices over which paths are taken. Contra Weber and Foucault, there is no reason why the rise of technocracy should be seen as an inevitable outcome of socio-ecotechnological change. If the aspiration for ecological rationality could be combined with a humanist project defined by a confident, empowered techno-literate citizenry and institutions which encourage and expressed self-critical rationality [Bookchin, 1990; Dryzek, 1987; Benhabib, 1992; Plumwood, 1998] Factor Four and Natural Capitalism might simply be reappropriated for rather different ends.
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A GREEN I NDUSTRI AL REVOLUTI ON? NOTES
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1. Broadly positive reviews of this project can be found in both left-leaning publications such as 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, Stanford and the Georgia Institute of Technology in the USA and at European technical universities such as Imperial, Lund, Leiden, Gratz, Vienna, Trondheim, Delft amongst other places. The Journal for Industrial Ecology and the Journal of Clean Production are central arenas where debate in this area is currently unfolding. 3. For optimistic assessments of the future of renewable energy see the Global Environmental Facilitys recent upbeat report, Promoting Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: GEF Climate Change Projects and Impacts June 2000 and Seth Dunn, Micropower [World Watch Institute, 2000]. Possibilities that green technological developments could ensure a halt in the rise 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 at Imperial College London, would seem to reflect the growing consensus on renewables more generally as he notes: The main question no longer relates to technological feasibility but to cost, of which the high costs of storage in the case of several renewable energy forms are especially 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 a low carbon future. A scenario of low carbon emissions has been shown to be entirely consistent with both developing countries achieving economic growth and rich countries continuing to increase their levels of affluence [Anderson, 2000]. Indeed, the Shell Oil scenario is that by 2060 the world will be getting 50 per cent of its energy from renewable sources (quoted in Anderson [ibid.]). 4. The concept of ecological rationality and democratic rationality used throughout this paper clearly suggest a debt to critical theory and requires further explication. This article follows Dryzeks pioneering approach [1987] to the concept of ecological rationality developed more recently by Plumwood [1998], but with some adjustments. Drawing from Mannheim, Dryzek argues ecological rationality is best seen as a form of functional rationality. To describe an organisational structure as functionally rational means first and foremost, that its organisation is such to consistently and effectively promote and produce some value. In this respect, he argues ecological rationality is concerned with: the capacity 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 in combination to cope with human induced problems [Dryzek, 1997: 25]. The concept of ecological rationality is thus clearly at variance with ecocentric anti-humanism, informed by the belief that nature knows best or that human intervention in ecosystems should be kept to a minimum. As Dryzek correctly notes: Nature knows best entails an excessively dismal outlook Ecological rationality suggests that non-intervention in natural systems is untenable. While man can destroy the productive, protective, and waste assimilative capacities of eco-systems, he is also quite capable of creating and sustaining a stable yet productive sub-climax [Dryzek, 1987: 36]. However, the manner in which Dryzek draws from Eugene Odums ecosystems ecology to formulate his account of ecological rationality is not without problems in so far as Odums ecology has been substantially challenged over recent years by a more discordant, dynamic view of ecosystems typified by the work of Daniel Botkin [1990]. In this respect, ecological rationality is reformulated in this article as the capacity of institutions to correct tendencies to damage or reduce human life-support systems 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 be sustainable to the extent that its corrective and innovative capacities enable it to make consistently good decisions that maintain its ecological relationships [Plumwood, 1998]. The term democratic rationality is used in this article to refer to Benhabibs postmetaphysical reformulation of Habermass communicative rationality along more agonistic 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 Natural Capitalism are as innocent of this issue as some critics have inferred. For example, as Hawkens, 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 for the environment overwhelming resource savings with even larger growth in the production of the wrong products, produced by the wrong processes, at the wrong scale and delivered using the wrong business models [Hawken et al., 1999: x]. 7. BP may have based their new image on Die Grunens sunflower, gone beyond petroleum and their chief executive may well have give a Reith lecture on sustainable development over recent times. Greenpeaces recent comment though, that BP spent more on this image change in 2000 than they did on their whole renewable energy programme in 1999 needs to born in mind. 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 business at a rate of 2030 per cent a year this would ensure that renewable energy production would match 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 payback for investment in energy saving, that is, a rate of return of more than 50 per cent ensures that potentially 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 between rhetoric and reality. Thus in relation to the spread of the green hyper-car, we are told at one point that this is gaining its momentum not from regulatory mandates, taxes, or subsidies but rather from new unleashed forces of advanced technology, consumer demands, competition and entrepreneurship [Hawken et al., 1999: 20]. The rest of this chapter is then devoted to arguing that a range of government-guided interventions in the market will be necessary to shape a viable context for the cars emergence. 10. Hawken, Lovins and Lovins suggest that taxation should be shifted away from labour and income and towards taxing resources use with the end goal of achieving zero taxation on employees. Taxing environmental bad has become a popular fiscal strategy of late. Extending these ideas, however, in such an extreme fashion would certainly produce inegalitarian and socially regressive outcomes. 11. As H. Patricia Hynes notes concerning the US National polls conducted since the 1950s show no increase in the percentage of people who report being very happy, despite the fact that 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 relations and 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. Hirst and Thompsons sceptical critique of the hyperglobalisers [1999] offers an important and salutary critique of much of the more extreme claims about the death of the nation state. It would seem evident that much of the hyperglobalist literature does downplay the fact that it was nation-states such as the USA and UK which played and still play a central role in structuring and supporting the current form of globalisation in a neo-liberal direction. The hyperglobalist position can also endure a fatalism which ignores the significant different patterns of public spending that can still be found between different forms of liberal capitalism. It would seem important not to move from this to the equally untenable position that nothing has changed in the global political economy. As transformationalists have argued [Held et al., 1999], there are subtle gradations of emphasis in this debate. Thus, on economic globalisation, the exchange between Hirst/Thompson and Perraton is instructive [Holden, 2000]. More generally, it needs to be recognised that the sceptical critique of globalisation has not engaged as yet with the much broader cultural and technological transformations that are highlighted by Castells [2000a, 1997, 2000b] as central to the emergence of globalisation more broadly. 13. Additional complexities are added to this discussion, moreover, when it is recognised displacement 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 in the US Defense Departments desire to develop a communications technology that could survive a Soviet invasion, Castells [2000a: 4551] reminds us of how libertarian utopian counter-cultural currents played a central role in reshaping and redirecting this technology towards more open and accessible ends. 15. Indeed, it is the refusal of some currents of ecological activism to confront this issue that lies at the root of Northern eco-imperialism as Katz [1998] and the other contributors to Braum and Castree [1998] have demonstrated. REFERENC E S
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Damian White A Green Industrial Revolution

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This article was downloaded by: [Harvard College] On: 10 November 2011, At: 10:12 Publisher: Routledge Informa

A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

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