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Ecological modernization and its discontents: The
American environmental movement’s resistance
to an innovation-driven future
Maurie J. Cohen *
Graduate Program in Environmental Policy Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102, USA Available online 15 December 2005
Abstract
Ecological modernization provides a theoretical framework for situating the emergence of new technology- intensive modes of environmental reform such as industrial ecology, environmentally conscious manufacturing, and ecological design. These forms of professional engineering practice all seek to exploit opportunities for aggressive innovation to achieve rigorous improvements in the environmental performance of industrial processes and consumer goods. Despite the potential of this approach, the American environmental movement has not offered much active support. This reticence is attributable to the historical development of organized environmentalism in the United States and its general tendency to privilege the interests of landscape and wildlife protection over concerns about public health and industrial pollution. There also exists within major segments of the country’s environmental movement an inertia that stems from an institutionalized preference for litigation and lobbying and a wariness about technologically intensive policy programs. Novel initiatives launched by Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council over the past decade however provide some instructive lessons for coming to terms with a more innovation-driven future. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
If we authentically want to reshape industrial practices, we should openly acknowledge that without influencing industry more directly, we cannot realize the potential of promising new approaches such as industrial ecology. Allen Hershkowitz, Bronx Ecology
Futures 38 (2006) 528– www.elsevier.com/locate/futures
0016-3287/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.futures.2005.09.
- Introduction
During the 1990s, environmental social scientists developed the concept of ecological modernization to capture the changing intellectual and institutional context of environmental policymaking in economically advanced nations [6,16,18,31,32,45]. This perspective departs from the largely command-and-control regulatory programs enshrined in 1970s legislation and encourages flexible strategies predicated upon aggressive technological innovation. Ecological modernization also emphasizes continuous improvement and seeks to dissolve familiar conflicts between economic growth and environmental responsibility. As such, proponents of this approach tend to subscribe to a relatively sanguine view of the future and this sets them apart from most other environmental theorists. Empirical research suggests that at least among northern European countries, policy initiatives consistent with ecological modernization have become commonplace and have contributed to some notable achievements. While it is important to maintain perspective, there are indications that if pursued prudently this emergent paradigm is capable of fostering manifold improvements in material and energy efficiency. Despite this promise, the most visible elements of the American environmental movement have displayed a long-standing reticence to actively campaign for policy programs predicated upon bold inventiveness. The following discussion seeks to identify the reasons for this apparent resistance to technological innovation on the part of the country’s leading environmental organizations and to assess their capacity to project a more positive view of the future. Section 2 reviews the background on ecological modernization and draws on evidence from several comparative policy studies to gauge the extent of its influence in different political settings. Section 3 describes the composition of the American environmental movement and explains its disinclination to embrace reform initiatives that rely on radical technological innovation. This issue is pursued further in Section 4, where ecological modernization is appraised from the standpoint of organized environmentalism in the United States. Section 5 highlights instances in which certain prominent groups have broken with their peers and begun to advocate for (and to participate in) projects that actively seek to shape the development of a new generation of environmental technologies. Section 6 describes the political implications of this situation and offers some recommendations to assist the American environmental movement to come to terms with the potential of ecological modernization. 1
- Ecological modernization and environmental policy
Originally conceived by German sociologist Joseph Huber in the mid-1980s, much of the early groundwork on ecological modernization was carried out by a small group of northern European social scientists [23,32,41,45]. Within policy-making circles, the first Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan in 1988 is often heralded as the keystone example of a concerted program of ecological modernization [18,28,44]. During the mid-1990s, this approach began to
(^1) My interpretation of the relationship between organized environmentalism and ecological modernization differs from the treatment recently presented by Arthur Mol [29]. Mol ascribes to the Dutch environmental movement an important role in the ascendancy of this policy program in the Netherlands—and, by extension, elsewhere in Europe. He also argues that leading environmental groups have themselves gone through a process of ecological modernization.
any other name” (emphasis in original). 6 Moore and Miller [33] similarly contend that “of the world’s industrialized nations only the United States has yet to fully appreciate the lasting significance of the change being wrought by burgeoning environmental concerns.” Even the more ambiguous aims of sustainable development have not taken root in the United States. On this score, Lafferty and Meadowcroft’s [25] views are particularly instructive
[S]ustainable development has had virtually no significant impact on the operations of the US federal government. It is not just that the term itself has failed to catch on, but also that core values associated with the idea—particularly the global equity dimension—have failed to gain even formal political acceptance. At the national level, US environmental policy remains largely frozen in the conservationist, regulation/compliance, industry- versus-environmentalists, and pollution-clean-up patterns that took shape either prior to or during the 1970s (emphasis in original). This lack of uptake of ecological modernization (and sustainable development for that matter) is not confined to the country’s policy-making institutions. Most of the American environmental movement, because of its preoccupation with legislative and legalistic matters, has also failed to develop an enduring interest. This poor receptivity for a strong program of technological innovation can be traced to the political dispositions of the major groups that comprise the American environmental movement and the issues that they selectively champion. For this reason, it is useful to examine the composition of organized environmentalism in the United States.
- The American environmental movement and ecological modernization
Among both activists and scholars, there exists a variety of views regarding whether environmentalism in the United States is a coherent social movement [11]. One perspective suggests that the lack of any coordinated leadership is evidence that the ‘environmental movement’ is really just a loose amalgamation of autonomous groups working to press forward their own idiosyncratic campaigns without any synchronization or sense of deep-seated common purpose. Philip Shebecoff [40], a long-time observer of American environmentalism, acknowledges this view while simultaneously preserving allegiance to the more conventional position.
[A]lthough environmentalism has become extraordinarily diverse and complex since the first Earth Day, with many parts, differing agendas, and a proliferation of institutions, and although its components are often in disarray and sometimes in conflict, it is a coherent social and cultural movement unified by a broadly shared—if diffuse—view of the world. Because of its breadth and often varying political objectives, the size and scope of the environmental movement has been a contested subject. Sociologist Robert Brulle [4] has carried out the most comprehensive survey of institutionalized environmentalism in the United States and he reports that during the mid-1990s it comprised upwards of 10,000 organizations.
(^6) The low salience of ecological modernization among American policymakers is not universal. The EPA’s pollution prevention initiatives, and more recently its so-called P3 programs, are indicative of a partial embrace of this approach (http://www.epa.gov/sustainability). Evidence of a more thoroughgoing uptake within the federal bureaucracy is necessarily quite limited. The EPA has a working group on industrial ecology and the Office of the Federal Environmental Executive supports the use of life-cycle analysis as part of its effort to upgrade the environmental performance of governmental agencies.
However, most of these groups are small and their influence, if any, is quite circumscribed. Nonetheless, it is useful to observe that the foremost interests of the vast majority (93%) of these multifarious groups are rooted in conservation, preservation, and wildlife management (from here on referred to as landscape and wildlife protection). 7 The remaining 7% of all environmental organizations in the United States comprises groups dedicated to reform environmentalism, environmental justice, and ecofeminism (from here on referred to as anti-pollution). 8 While a portrayal of American environmentalism at this comprehensive scale is broadly informative, it is at the same time quite limiting because it fails to acknowledge that most of these organizations are too weak and underfunded to have any measurable impact on policy outcomes. From this standpoint, it is more useful to focus attention on those groups that command a sizeable cadre of members and a relatively steady stream of revenue. Organizations that fit this description are construed as constituting the core of the environmental movement. Brulle’s [4] detailed accounting turns up 87 organizations that conform to this more demanding standard (Appendices A and B). Of this total, 41 groups (47.1%) are classified as being primarily interested in landscape and wildlife protection and 46 groups (52.9%) fight against the incursion of pollution in its various forms (Fig. 1). Although these two major facets of the American environmental movement are at relative parity in terms of the number of major organizations, landscape and wildlife protection commands a disproportionately large share of overall membership (84.1%), income (80.3%), and paid staff (67.9%). This observation holds important implications for the current study as it helps to explain why organized environmentalism in the United States has not devoted much attention to ecological modernization. Most of the leading environmental groups are focused on defending imperiled ecosystems and majestic landscapes—a set of concerns about which ecological modernization is relatively mute. As Shebecoff [40] explains, “the mainstream environmental movement has yet to embed itself in the workaday human community—where people live, worry about their jobs, send their children to school, go to church and synagogue and mosque, and are exposed to myriad social as well as physical insults in their environment.” The claim that the American environmental movement is geared more to landscape and wildlife protection rather than to anti-pollution is also supported by a few salient anecdotes from the extant literature. While these episodes are not definitive proof of an explicit bias, in the
Fig. 1. Institutional Resources by Organizational Form. Source: Author’s calculations from data in Brulle (2000), Tables 10.3, 10.4, 10.5.
(^7) Author’s calculations based on data in Brulle [4]. (^8) Brulle [4] also identifies environmental organizations that reflect an outwardly religious orientation—so-called ecotheological groups—as constituting an independent strand of contemporary American environmentalism. However, this element of the environmental movement, because of its exceedingly small size and relatively low political visibility, is excluded from the current analysis.
again prompted popular interest to coalesce around the ill effects of industrial pollution on public health. Anxiety about the widespread application of pesticides, the rampant use of toxic chemicals, and the deterioration of urban air quality merged with natural resource management and growing popularity of outdoor recreation to forge the modern environmental movement [11]. Several new organizations, most notably the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF, now Environmental Defense), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Greenpeace emerged out of this renewal of public interest in urban environmental issues. These groups spearheaded the use of legal and scientific expertise and their more combative temperament challenged the relatively staid politics common among most mainstream landscape and wildlife protection organizations. 10 As has been extensively documented elsewhere, this wave of activity spurred passage of some of the country’s landmark environmental laws—for example, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. All of these legislative achievements joined command-and-control regulations with remedial technologies to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of industrial activity. This era represented the high-water mark for anti-pollution environmentalism and its flagship organizations went through a process of maturation, bureaucratization, and professionalization. Despite some commendable successes reducing air and water pollution during the decade, by the 1980s the strategy of relying on litigation to compel recalcitrant industrial corporations and government agencies into upholding their environmental obligations had begun to run down. Vulnerable firms learned how to defend themselves by mobilizing their own lawyers, scientists, and public relations specialists against the activist onslaught. This situation catalyzed a major debate within the American environmental movement over the efficacy of seeking strict new laws and then pursuing judicial intervention to ensure their implementation. Some proponents of this mode of environmentalism began to embrace a set of so-called ‘third-wave’ approaches premised on the use of economic incentives, the negotiation of voluntary standards, and the establishment of collaborative relationships with industry. These developments have drawn harsh criticism in some circles for forsaking more strident resistance strategies and allegedly allowing environmentalism to become co-opted by its chief adversaries [9,15]. By failing to provide resolute support for anti-pollution initiatives, the American environmental movement has missed a critical opportunity to reassert its political relevancy. Dryzek et al. [10] persuasively argue that the legislative achievements of the early 1970s were attributable to an ability to link the environmental agenda to key governmental imperatives. In particular, the Nixon administration—wracked by anti-war demonstrations and racial and feminist protest campaigns—sought to resolve its legitimacy crisis by championing a new generation of environmental laws to defuse some of the impetus for civil unrest. A similar convergence occurred again briefly in 1980 when, after several weeks of graphic television footage about the chemical contamination of the Love Canal neighborhood in upstate New York, an embattled President Carter signed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compen- sation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) authorizing the creation of Superfund. 11 The Oil Pollution
(^10) Under the leadership of David Brower during the 1960s, the Sierra Club was a notable exception to this general characterization. (^11) Dryzek et al. [10] does not agree that the controversy surrounding Love Canal was a legitimation crisis, but these authors fail to consider fully the political circumstances that surrounded this event. President Carter’s electoral prospects were in a downward spiral heading into the 1980 election and winning New York was a crucial element, at the time at least, of his political strategy. Resolving the contamination situation and putting an end to the extremely negative publicity swirling around it was necessary to maintain the viability of his campaign.
Act of 1990, passed during the grim aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, was the result of a similar alignment of political forces.
- Environmentalist criticism of ecological modernization
There is potential value in probing further the question of why the uptake of ecological modernization by the American environmental movement has been so diffident. Even among anti- pollution advocates, there has been a hesitancy to embrace emergent fields such as industrial ecology and environmentally conscious manufacturing. This ambivalence about harnessing technological innovation to promote a rigorous policy program of environmental improvement does not spring from a single source, but rather can be attributed to four biases inherent in the mindset of contemporary American environmentalists. First, there is a concern that ecological modernization offers little more than an updating of Gifford Pinchot’s notion of efficient use that proved highly divisive during the early decades of the 20th century. Second, ecological modernization does not endorse consecrated concepts of nature and this is, at best, unsettling to sizeable portions of the American environmental movement. Third, organized environmentalism in the United States is, from an institutional standpoint, heavily vested in the legalistic framework that has developed over the past three decades and hence is highly constrained in its ability to advocate for alternative approaches. Finally, the relatively buoyant future outlook that underlies ecological modernization does not mesh with the palpable pessimism that animates key segments of popular environmentalism.
4.1. Ecological modernization as neo-Pinchotism
For students of American environmental history, Gifford Pinchot is a familiar figure [19,27,35]. Breaking with his family’s staunch gentry standing, young Gifford was dispatched to France and Germany during the latter years of the 19th century to study the then nascent field of scientific forestry. Upon his return to the United States, he became an associate of the master park planner Frederick Law Olmstead and established himself as an indispensable figure within President Theodore Roosevelt’s legion of progressive reformers. During the first decades of the 20th century, Pinchot was the country’s most vocal advocate for the efficient exploitation of natural resources and he served as the founding chief of the national forest service. He used his prominent political position to denounce the rapacious, wasteful timber harvesting practices common at the time in New England, the Great Lakes area, and elsewhere throughout the United States. Pinchot extolled a brand of environmentalism that privileged scientific management and the careful use of the nation’s forests, soils, fisheries, and other natural resources. Pinchotism sought to impress upon companies the idea that they could improve their profitability by recognizing that the great storehouse was not limitless and irresponsible action would be, in the long run, self-defeating. This current of early 20th century American environmentalism was modest and above all politically pragmatic. The intent was to garner a modicum of environmental improvement without compromising the country’s extraordinary wealth-generating capacity and, of equal importance, the elitist positions of the men who formed the ranks of the leading advocacy organizations. 12
(^12) Because of their emphasis on fishing and hunting, early American conservation groups were largely male bastions. Roosevelt and Pinchot were themselves members of one of the most exclusive of these associations, the Boone and Crocket Club.
financial resources, and prestige. This lopsided rivalry carries over into the collective understanding that exists about the benevolence of technology. More specifically, the overall American environmental cast of mind is notably guarded when it comes to declarations of pending technological revolution (as occurs in most expressions of ecological modernization). Part of this anxiety stems from an inadequate comprehension of the differences between discontinuous, system-level innovation and more modest ‘fixes.’ At the same time, technological enthusiasts have a long history of overselling the benefits (and underestimating the costs) of any number of visionary schemes and this experience has engendered a reflexive skepticism among many segments of the environmental movement. Moreover, technological innovation holds little interest for most of the American environmental movement because of its primary focus on landscape and wildlife protection rather than on energy and materials utilization. Even most anti-pollution advocates in the United States—because of their general preference for litigating and lobbying within the existing regulatory setup—have tended to view ‘technology’ quite narrowly in terms of remedial equipment that neutralizes emission streams rather than as a means for fundamentally reorganizing resource-intensive economies. 13 In other words, debates about technology regularly boil down to which pollution control technique most readily conforms to mandated requirements. This approach has been the cornerstone of anti-pollution environmentalism for the last four decades. In reflecting on this dilemma, O’Rourke et al. [34] contend that this situation is attributable to a ‘distrust of technological solutions to technologically created problems.’ A willingness to recognize that broad-based technologi- cal innovation affords opportunities to span the economics-versus-environment divide and to propel several-fold improvements in materials and energy efficiencies has not been very widespread. 14 Part of the reason for this disposition may reside in a sense of technical inadequacy. Shebecoff [40] quotes Henry Kendall, a former chairperson of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who wryly observed a number of years ago, obviously with some intent of hyperbole, that “the environmental community’s understanding and use of relevant science is poor. They don’t even understand the potential limitations of science. So they can’t distinguish between legitimate science and what is science fiction or fantasy.” The same could be said about the American environmental movement’s appreciation for technological innovation. Few major environmental figures are trained engineers and most are more disposed toward litigating and political strategizing than extended deliberations with technologists. During the 1960s and 1970s, a sizeable number of activist engineers, some of them inspired by Buckminster Fuller and other farsighted visionaries, became pioneers in the fields of appropriate technology and ecological design. However, the American environmental movement has regularly kept proponents of these
(^13) This description is a more accurate characterization of reform environmentalism than it is of the other constituent elements of anti-pollution activism—environmental justice and ecofeminism. These latter two modes of expression tend to be more outwardly vocal and less reliant on institutionalized strategies of resistance. However, in terms of resources and scope, they represent a very small portion of this wing of the American environmental movement and thus tend to be overshadowed by the major organizations that comprise this category. (^14) This hesitancy about technological innovation is not confined to the American environmental movement. Commenting on the situation in Britain, Yearley [51] contends that a similar ambivalence arises from the role that “technology [has] played in bringing about our ecological problems. In some instances this connection is clear and direct. Humans invented the CFCs which are threatening the ozone layer. Technological advance allowed humans to develop nuclear power, which in turn has brought us persistent environmental problems, such as those associated with the calamitous explosion at Chernobyl in 1986.[m]any environmentalists are thus critical of technical progress.”
perspectives at a distance because their small-scale demonstration projects have been out of step with prevailing strategies. 15
4.4. Anti-pollution as a resistance movement
Since the appearance of Rachel Carson’s landmark book Silent Spring four decades ago and the organization of the first Earth Day in 1970, American environmentalism has assumed the posture of a resistance movement [4]. In other words, the major organizations, for the most part, have sought political traction by defining themselves in opposition to economically and politically powerful interests. This is not surprising because all successful social movements require adversaries to attract supporters, to energize campaigns, and to forge consensus across a diverse membership. Anti-pollution activists’ chief antagonists from the onset have been large chemical producers and solid-waste processors. Reflecting on this situation, Allen Hershkowitz [22] remarks
[T]he environment movement has been quite rigid and adversarial when it comes to relations with the captains of industry. Given the severe and sometimes deadly public- health threats and habitat destruction that industry has historically caused—so much of it affecting humanity’s most sensitive and vulnerable population subgroups, children, and the poor, and so much of it based on nothing more than pure greed—the anti-pollution, preservationist focus of environmentalists has understandably morphed into a general and disdainful anti-industrial worldview. While one needs to be careful about overstating the case, many firms have begun to embrace new environmental commitments over the past decade—for example the Responsible Care program spearheaded by the chemical industry, the diffusion of eco-management and audit schemes (EMAS), and the pursuit of ISO 14000 certifications. In the face of these initiatives, it has become difficult for environmental organizations to use traditional forms of mobilization and to paint their chief rivals with the same old brush. As Buttel [5] puts it, “Ecological modernization expresses hope, and makes it more readily possible to identify and appreciate the significance of environmental success stories.” This congenial posture is at odds with the glum portrayals of the future that have typically invigorated environmental campaigns. Although there are exceptions—some of which are outlined in the following section—most of the major environmental groups have not tried to fashion new rules of engagement with which to press forward their objectives.
- Overcoming objections to ecological modernization
Despite the dilemmas that ecological modernization holds for the American environmental movement, there are indications that some groups have begun to embrace industrial ecology, environmentally conscious manufacturing, and other related modes of professional practice. This section describes recent efforts by two of the standard-bearers of anti-pollution
(^15) In many respects, the leading contemporary American proponent of a strong program of innovation-driven environmental reform is Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. The relationship that Lovins and his colleagues have had over the last two or three decades with the environmental movement is best characterized as polite disengagement.
5.2. NRDC/Michigan source reduction initiative
The Michigan Source Reduction Initiative (MSRI) was a collaboration undertaken by NRDC, Dow Chemical Corporation, and five community activists at the company’s Midland (Michigan) production facility between 1996 and 1999. The massive 2000-acre plant produces more than 500 products and is notorious among regulators for its poor environmental record. Throughout the 1990s, the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) ranked the facility as the country’s eighth largest emitter of toxic chemicals and the sixth largest generator of toxic wastes. The objective of this cooperative project was to reduce annual emissions of more than two dozen priority chemicals by 35% using only pollution prevention techniques (i.e. no end-of-pipe technologies). A less tangible goal was to shift thinking among the company’s environmental health and safety managers away from compliance and toward prevention, while concurrently fostering more open and participatory decision-making processes. By the end of the 2^1 ⁄ 2 -year timeframe established for the project, Dow had reportedly managed to institute cost-effective measures that reduced its emissions by 43% and its wastes by 37%. However, the company encountered difficulty altering the corporate incentive system to encourage more proactive modes of environmental management, although this was attributed to methodological issues regarding the project’s set-up. Despite this mixed record of success, important lessons seem to have flowed from this project. For instance, the vast majority of the pollution prevention projects required little capital (less than $300,000) and had payback periods of less than a year. One particularly notable initiative cost the company only $330,000, but generated annual cost savings of more than $3 million. Moreover, none of the reported improvements required elaborate regulatory exemptions or entailed the need to prepare confidentiality agreements.
5.3. NRDC/Bronx Community Paper Company
NRDC was also the organizational impetus behind a widely publicized collaboration to establish the Bronx Community Paper Company (BCPC), a $600 million recycled paper mill slated for one of the poorest neighborhoods in the South Bronx [20,22]. Pioneered largely by NRDC senior scientist Allen Hershkowitz in conjunction with Banana Kelly, a local community development agency, the project envisioned the construction of a manufacturing facility capable of turning over 300 million metric tons of waste paper each year into newsprint and other usable paper products. The initiative was also underpinned by an expansive social mission and plans called for the inclusion of a childcare center, low-income housing, and other community facilities. Hershkowitz persevered for a decade to bring the vision into reality, all the time facing innumerable obstacles that included lawsuits over siting the mill, aggrieved local politicians unable to dispense patronage in accordance with customary practices, organized crime syndicates upset over the loss of valuable disposal contracts, and partners that became apprehensive as the risks became apparent. Eventually, the Swedish company that had agreed to operate the facility backed out of the project and efforts to identify a suitable replacement faltered. In the end, the impediments proved too large and the paper mill was not constructed. In 2000, after investing several million dollars from its own funds, NRDC abandoned the project. Although the bold plan was not brought to fruition, the experiment lives on as an example of how the principles of industrial ecology can be applied to seemingly overwhelming environmental challenges. The aborted attempt to build the BCPC endures as learning experience not only for NRDC, but for how organized environmentalism could potentially use technological innovation, entrepreneurial savvy, and enlightened social values to advance a new model of industrial development.
- Conclusion
Ecological modernization and its associated modes of professional engineering practice have made considerable progress in several countries over the past decade [1,10,16,18,31,48]. In particular, European environmental vanguard nations have largely replaced their command- and-control regulatory frameworks with flexible systems designed to facilitate continuous improvement and spur technological innovation [1,42]. 17 While other affluent countries have proceeded more slowly, there is a distinct awareness that the static, conflict-ridden approaches of the prior era are no longer appropriate or effective. The perpetuation of environmental harm by industrial operations is steadily coming to be viewed not as an inexpensive way to externalize certain costs of production and to promote economic competitiveness, but rather as a mark of unnecessary waste, inelegant design, and longer-term comparative disadvantage. Although the trend remains patchy, the evidence suggests that policymakers and industrial managers in certain places are learning to synthesize environmental responsibility with economic considerations in accordance with the principles of ecological modernization. Of poignant interest for current purposes is the fact that the United States has failed to make much headway embarking on this process [10,25,33,36,39]. This observation begs the question as to whether the country is, on one hand, simply lagging a few paces behind the forerunners or, on the other hand, pursuing an alternative (but perhaps equally practicable) path. 18 If it indeed is the case that ecological modernization simultaneously confers both environmental and economic advantages—and the record thus far suggests that it does—it is disconcerting that the American environmental movement has not played a more prominent role advocating for policies consistent with this approach. As Dryzek et al. [10] have argued, organized environmentalism in the United States needs to reassert its relevance by linking its objectives to a core governmental imperative. Ecological modernization, because it provides a set of strategies for harmonizing environmental protection with economic growth, provides a preˆt-a`- porter strategy for achieving this political goal. To be sure, the full spectrum of the American environmental movement has not turned its back on ecological modernization. Several prominent organizations have actually forged programs that draw on the various modes of professional practice spawned by this policy model. Nonetheless, these cases remain anomalies and more other evidence is harder to find. 19 The issue, however, remains whether a concerted program of ecological modernization can take hold in the United States and whether the country’s environmental movement has any role to play in this process. Criticism of the core groups over the past decade has frequently been acerbic, though most commentators have taken organized environmentalism to task for failing to respond more
(^17) During the 1970s, most affluent countries put in place their first generation of environmental policies based on the concept of command-and-control. However, in actual practice, the implementation of this legal set-up has varied widely across nations because of differences in political culture and institutional styles. For example, Vogel [47] highlights how in the United Kingdom the system has allowed for considerable administrative discretion while in the United States it has been applied with much greater rigidity and legal oversight. (^18) Also relevant is the observation by Dryzek et al. [10] that the United States may lack some of the essential building blocks for an initial weak form of ecological modernization, but they paradoxically contend that the country is well equipped for a second stage entailing a more rigorous application of this policy model. (^19) Responsibility for the current situation is not solely attributable to a lack of initiative on the part of major environmental organizations. For instance, Cohen and Howard [8] describe how industrial ecologists have not been especially forthcoming in reaching out to environmentalists and a similar situation exists with regard to green chemistry [50].
this example of success is more the exception than the rule. The American environmental movement as a whole has not been especially effective advancing global themes such as climate change and initiatives such as Agenda 21 have no public visibility. While the country’s desultory embrace of this agenda resides in a deeply seated national political sensibility that resists internationalism, the American environmental movement must bear some responsibility for this failure. 24 A more outward view is, in many respects, a prerequisite for ecological modernization, but organized environmentalism in the country has to date made little effort to develop this capacity. As a result, serious discussion of how technological innovation might be used to bring about a more healthful and hopeful future is yet to begin in the United States.
Acknowledgements
Nilay Ayguney, Aaron Comrov, and Brian Hoffner provided research assistance on this paper. I have also benefited from the comments of Wendy Godek, Jeff Howard, Caryn Yaacov, and this journal’s referees on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
Appendix A. Major landscape preservation and wildlife protection organizations in the United States
Organization Website
Alliance for the Wild Rockies (DE) http://www.wildrockiesalliance.org American Farmland Trust (C) http://www.farmland.org American Forests (C) http://www.americanforests.org Appalachian Mountain Club (P) http://www.outdoors.org Audubon Naturalist Society of the Central Atlantic States (P)
http://www.audubonnaturalist.org
Boone and Crocket Club (WM) http://www.boone-crockett.org Cenozoic Society (DE) N/A Conservation International Foundation (P) http://www.conservation.org Defenders of Wildlife (P) http://www.defenders.org Ducks Unlimited (WM) http://www.ducks.org Earth First! (DE) http://www.earthfirst.org Elm Research Institute (C) http://www.libertyelm.com Elmwood Institute/Center for Ecoliteracy (DE) http://www.ecoliteracy.org International Wildlife Coalition (P) http://www.iwc.org Izaak Walton League of America (C) http://www.iwla.org Mono Lake Committee (P) http://www.monolake.org National Arbor Day Foundation (C) http://www.arborday.org National Audubon Society (P) http://www.audubon.org National Parks and Conservation Association (P) http://www.npca.org National Wildlife Federation (WM) http://www.nwf.org Native Forest Council (DE) http://www.forestcouncil.org Nature Conservancy (P) http://nature.org North American Bluebird Society (P) http://www.nabluebirdsociety.org North American Wildlife Foundation (P) N/A Planet-Drum Foundation (DE) http://www.planetdrum.org Quail Unlimited (WM) http://www.qu.org (continued on next page)
(^24) As Blumenthal [2] describes, this anti-international temperament is a long-standing feature of American
conservatism and the outlook achieved new prominence in the aftermath of the 1994 midterm elections.
Organization Website
Rails to Trails Conservancy (C) http://www.railtrails.org Rainforest Action Network (DE) http://www.ran.org Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (WM) http://www.rmef.org Save the Redwoods League (P) http://www.savetheredwoods.org Scenic America (C) http://www.scenic.org Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (DE) http://www.seashepherd.org Sierra Club (P) http://www.sierraclub.org Treepeople (P) http://www.treepeople.org Trout Unlimited (WM) http://www.tu.org Trust for Public Land (C) http://www.tpl.org Whitetails Unlimited (WM) http://www.whitetailsunlimited.com Wilderness Society (P) http://www.wilderness.org Wildlife Conservation Society (P) http://wcs.org Wildlife Society (P) http://www.wildlife.org World Wildlife Fund (P) http://www.worldwildlife.org C, Conservation; P, preservation; WM, wildlife management. Source: Based on Brulle (2000), Table A3, pp. 286–288.
Appendix B. Major anti-pollution organizations in the US
Organization Website
Air and Waste Management Association (RE) http://www.awma.org Alliance for the Chesapeake (RE) http://www.acb-online.org National Tribal Environmental Council (EJ) http://www.ntec.org American Littoral Society (RE) http://www.littoralsociety.org American Rivers (RE) http://www.amrivers.org Americans for the Environment (RE) N/A Association of Forest Service Employees for Environ- mental Ethics (EJ)
http://www.afseee.org
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (previously Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste) (EJ)
http://www.chej.org
Center for Marine Conservation (RE) http://www.oceanconservancy.org Chesapeake Bay Foundation (RE) http://www.cbf.org Clamshell Alliance (RE) N/A Clean Water Action (RE) http://www.cleanwateraction.org Cousteau Society (RE) http://www.cousteau.org Earth Island Institute (RE) http://www.earthisland.org Earthjustice (previously Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) (RE)
http://www.earthjustice.org
Environmental Action (RE) N/A Environmental Defense (previously Environmental Defense Fund) (RE)
http://www.edf.org
Friends of the Earth (RE) http://www.foe.org Friends of the Sea Otter (RE) http://www.seaotter.org Government Accountability Project (EJ) http://www.whistleblower.org Greenhouse Crisis Foundation (RE) N/A Greenpeace (RE) http://www.greenpeace.org Institute for Local Self Reliance (RE) http://www.ilsr.org League of Woman Voters (RE) http://www.lwv.org Lighthawk (RE) http://www.lighthawk.org Morning Star Foundation (EJ) N/A Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet (EF) N/A (continued on next page)
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