ABSTRACT
Rather than seeking to restructure the regime of capitalist accumulation, the response of governments has been to argue, not surprisingly, that rising levels of economic development and personal consumption are not incompatible with sustainable development. This is a stance referred to as ecological modernisation and this is discussed in more detail later. Governments have sought to instigate measures that aim to secure sustainability without compromising levels of personal consumption. The stance of governments in the developed world has broadly been to encourage the ‘greening’ of capitalism without fundamentally affecting its operation. Measures adopted or proposed by governments have included internalising the costs of environmental externalities by incorporating them into the costs of industrial production. Although in many ways welcome, forcing companies to realise that production has an environmental cost, such measures are severely limited. It is possible
1972: Early publications Meadows et al. The Limits to Growth; Ecologist ‘Blueprint for survival’.
