Green Liberalism: Chances & Challenges

Global natural resources are rapidly depleting. A transition away from current resource-intensive socio-economic systems and individual lifestyles is extremely urgent. A crucial point of discussion concerns a potential conflict between liberal values and measures needed for sustainable transition. The objective of this article is to achieve a better understanding of the alleged conflict between liberalism and environmentalism to explore the chances, challenges and possible limits of green liberalism. For this purpose, two core commitments of prominent liberal traditions are scrutinized in greater detail: a commitment to the free markets as the most freedom-enhancing institution, as well as a commitment to pluralism, coming with a non-interference in conceptions of the good life. We argue that some of the alleged conflicts between liberalism and environmentalism identified in the literature appear in a new light as soon as one moves beyond a notion of negative freedom towards a conception of freedom that allows for a possible decrease of human freedom due to resource depletion. We conclude with a discussion of a major potential, as well as a major limitation of green liberalism: green liberalism allows an understanding of individual and collective agents as drivers of the needed institutional change and highlights the important role of freedom to pursue different life paths as a fundamental prerequisite to bring about and steer the needed socio-economic transition. An imperfect but still powerful instrument it provides to foster such a transition is the rule of law, exemplified by a number of constitutional court cases in New Zealand, Colombia and the Netherlands in recent years. The limitation of liberalism we identify is its anthropocentrism, only providing limited room for rights of non-human animals and nature.