The perm coopts the alternative in order to maintain the squo, makes all of the impacts inevitable

There is, however, an overlooked utopian feature in the environmental eco· modern discourse. To date, there have been numerous studies about the history of environmental politics, especially with regard to how ecological modernization came into being, as well as research about its spread in different areas (e.g. Mol and Sonnenfeld, 2000). But very few analyse the visionary and utopian aspects that may explain how any such approach to politics can gain so much acceptance when it is described as a salvation from contemporary problems that are presented as apocalyptic. The ecomodern utopia's combination of the desire for a lost paradise with the promise of heaven meant that its proponents could argue that the chance for humanity to be saved was imminent. There is a clear determinism in the Industrial Fatalist dis· course, which becomes visible when every critique is brushed away with arguments of backwardness, earthen floors and poverty and puts the elements of time and progress in the hands of Liberal- Conservatives. These types of utopian ideas can be described as "millenarianism". The millennial good time restores something of the glory of a Golden Age, but it is also descri· bed as being at the end of time. Millenarianism is historically associated with Christianity's messianic message. This has created a dynamic dimension to the forward-looking determinism that encourages the acts of a selected few (Kumar, 1991), which is similar to the way that Sweden is described as being the frontrunner in climate-change politics. A green economy or eco-efficient economy is a partial critique of the present society, a critique based on scientific language. The solution can be seen as a form of millenarianism in the sense that those in government create a distinct actor network that infuses hope and creates a way out of the dilemma. The hope is infinite since it offers the prospect of the ultimate society, in the form of an eco-efficient economy. In line with the ecologically modern discourse, an "eco-efficient economy" is presented as an utopia that launches a couple of technological fixes, which means that contemporary society does not need to change fundamentally. Although the description of an utopia always contains a critique of the prevailing society, it need not necessarily be a total alternative to it (Kumar, 1987). An eco-efficient economy can instead be described as the opposite: a conservative utopia. Society is merely extrapolated from the present to the future, with some technological fixes added. Such utopias are characterized by the existence of a great faith in technology, although detailed descriptions of technology are left out. The direction that the society is moving towards is not altered although the pace of change is said to be increased (Segal, 1986). The image of conservative utopias is made attractive as a result of their effectiveness, purity, absence of noise and harmonious conditions. The government would be left to the experts, not citizens, which would create effective communities (Segal, 1986). The analysis of Sweden as a frontrunner and the ideal eco-efficient economy demonstrates that the understanding of utopia as a system-change is not valid. Such a limited understanding of utopia tends to reduce the possibility of certain types of utopias; conservative utopias might be dismissed from analytical scrutiny. In the case of the ecoefficient economy, it is not about changing existing institutions, behaviour or power relations, even if utopia in many other cases contains the call for radical change. Climate change is a much contested field. We find that during the period that we studied, the dominant discourse, Industrial Fatalism, was heavily attacked for not being able to manage the problem; simultaneously this discourse invested strong emotions in the image of Sweden as a frontrunner country while making the lowering of carbon emissions and continued economic growth a possibility, through an eco-efficient economy. By framing climate change as a problem for humanity, actors within the Industrial Fatalist discourse matched their deep-anchored faith in large-scale technologies, such as nuclear power, with comic apocalyptic scenarios in which they were in control. The comic apocalypse was co-created with human solutions presented in a powerful way. Industrial Fatalist actors presented themselves as being able to manage both the problem and the answer. This proposed solution was halted - to a large extent, globally - after Germany decided to abandon nuclear power and Japan stopped all nuclear operations after the Fukushima disaster; at the same time, the UK and Finland were prominent examples of the opposite (Wittneben, 2012). In Sweden, as of 2014, the LiberalConservative government still supported the plan to swap old nuclear power plants for new ones and continue the dependency on uranium supplied by Ukraine and Russia. The post-political situation in which apocalyptic framing can occur simultaneously with conservative action is possible because the apocalypse, through its comic presentation, is made governable by humans and is met concurrently by big emotionally embedded planetary engineering solutions that offer the assurance that the industrial capitalist world's ecological system can handle climate change.