Ecological modernization: From national emergence to global maturation

Abstract

This chapter examines how a contradiction has developed in the environmental movement in the past decade. On the one hand, the environmental consequences of globalization have attracted only limited attention, but when they are addressed are portrayed in a negative light. On the other hand, environmental sociologists who study developments in national environment reform agree that the all-pessimistic or even apocalyptic interpretation of a capitalist-industrial society has all but melted into the air.