ABSTRACT
The hopes and dreams of the progress of modern society, not least of social welfare, have for a long time been tied to technological progress, and the engineers and to a lesser degree the workers within the industries have been the often-celebrated heroes. Basically, the Nordic welfare project of the last century leaned heavily on the productivity of industry and its continuous growth. Through governing the state, a major tenet of the labour movement in the Nordic countries collected taxes, dreams and resources to make life better for the many. As long as productivity was growing and welfare was secured, this model in a way was social sustainable development. There is at least one problem with this, however, and that is that the social welfare has been resting on ecologically unsustainable production and its continuous growth. The traditional aspirations for social welfare have obviously not been leading towards ecological welfare.
