Debate - Green Liberalisms: Nature, Agency and the Good

Recreational activism: politics, nature, and the rise of neoliberalism

“…As Ted Steinberg (2010) describes it, green liberalism is a theory that 'unites a faith in the ability of both price mechanisms and individual (consumer and investor) initiative to rescue the earth. Economic freedom and pragmatic individual action stand at the core of this ideology' (p. 7; See also Bell, 2005;Stephens, 2001;Wissenburg, 1998). Green liberalism shakes off the notion that profits and ecosystems are antithetical and insists that competition in the marketplace can, through certain regulatory mechanisms based upon individual and ecological 'rights,' deliver a sustainable earth.…”

Questioning Socio-Ecological Transformations

“…This suggestion that environmental degradation threatens liberal democratic regimes becomes crucial to Ferguson's exploration of the relationship between liberalism and economic growth (for an earlier iteration of the debate see the discussion between Piers Stephens and Marcel Wissenburg (Stephens 2001;Wissenburg 2001). He therefore considers the degree to which a liberal democratic state might be able to move towards a post-growth economy.…”

Michael Hannis, Freedom and Environment: Autonomy, Human Flourishing and the Political Philosophy of Sustainability

“…Are the demands of a sustainable society compatible with the value of individual liberty that Western liberal societies venerate as primary? The debate over this question can be tracked as far back as John Stuart Mill's advocacy of the 'stationary state' in his Principles of Political Economy in 1848, but in its contemporary scholarly form it really began in the late 1990s with a succession of papers and the debates following publication of Marcel Wissenburg's book Green Liberalism (Stephens 1996(Stephens , 2001Vincent 1998;Wissenburg 1998Wissenburg , 2001Bell 2002;Hailwood 2004;Meyer 2005). Aspects of the debate included the role and significance of neutrality in characterising the liberal polity, the tensions between various forms of liberal theory and their different suitability levels for green outcomes, the problems of preference generation, and the role of the virtues in a greened liberal society.…”