ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the ontology that underlies Sweden's ecological modernisation and its consequences for the natural environment. It examines Swedish faith in technology and the official embrace of a growth model of economic development, and what has recently been called the myth of sustainable consumption. Central to Sweden's official optimism is a faith in planning and the ability to predict and control the future in the interests of guaranteeing stability and security made possible by technical and managerial expertise. Once again the tone in Sweden is optimistic: economic profits, growth and environmental success are entirely compatible. In Sweden, the logic of everyday environmental practice is combined with a disattention that is encouraged by official policy and the orthodox views surrounding climate change and the environment. Critics of ecological modernisation in Sweden label it utopian, an unrealistic and unrealisable vision of unlimited growth and deluded in its neglect of its own environmental consequences.
