Ecological citizenship: coming out ‘clean’ without turning ‘green’?

Proponents of the cosmopolitan view of ecological citizenship claim that in order to fulfil the moral obligations of global justice, citizens must undergo deep attitude shifts and adopt green civic virtues. To test this empirically, a typology of four major combinations of environmental attitudes and ecological practise is constructed and the extent to which these four citizen types are found in Sweden is assessed using data from nationwide annual surveys. Discovery of a large group of citizens whose practice is green ecological but who exhibit grey environmental attitudes leads to the conclusion that, contrary to the assertions of proponents of the cosmopolitan view, citizens can indeed come out ecologically clean without undergoing deep attitudinal shifts, without turning green.