How to be a Green Liberal

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.…”

Analytical anarchism? A critique of Alan Carter’s anarchist theory of history

“…If the answer is ‘no’, then the state-primacy thesis is based on the empirically false premise that state-like institutions have the permanent motivation and ability to develop the productive forces. As Carter’s most perceptive anarchist critics have noted, it might simply be the case that the state isn’t as universally strong and as rational as Carter’s state-primacy thesis demands that it should be (Hailwood 2004: 147).…”

Global and Ecological Justice: Prioritising Conflicting Demands1

“…e.g. Wissenburg 1998, Hailwood 2004), the major obstacles to fruitful use of intrinsic value and similar notions in defence of the ecology are that it only convinces the already converted (it seems to take a leap of faith to ʻseeʼ intrinsic value, thus does not work on those it should impress), and that it does not solve anything: either ʻnatureʼ as a whole is made sacred and any infringement on it becomes equally immoral, or parts of nature have a special value relative to other parts -making trade-offs with those other parts, their values, and other interests still possible.…”