Limits of Freedom and the Freedom of Limits: Responding to the Extinction Crisis with Responsibility, Restraint, and Joy

Abstract

Can reflection about ecological limits, particularly the perils of the extinction crisis, help inspire forms of environmental responsibility guided by creativity and freedom rather than fear and necessity? This paper shows how earlier work on ecological limits relied on the prospect of an environmentally frightening and potentially authoritarian future to compel social action through fear, whether conceived in biophysical terms that urge self-interest and prudence or as ethical imperatives of responsibility that stress stern duties and obligations. Agreeing that ignoring ecological limits is both imprudent and unethical, I argue that the emphasis on negative sources of motivation, which remains a central rhetorical strategy in green thought, misses an opportunity to think about the value of ecological limits differently, and to respond to the challenge of living within ecological constraints through joyful expressions of social resourcefulness spirited by an attitude of creativity and freedom. Although ecological limits imply restricting certain forms of negative freedom, they also provide a context in which other modes of ecologically responsible freedom can be cultivated. The challenge of living in an “age of limits” can thus be understood, in part, as an inspiration to realize modes of freedom that are compatible with ecological responsibility. Viewing responsibility as something created by people through politics, rather than imposed on them as an ethical imperative, taps into a powerful source of political motivation with potentially broad appeal across social and intellectual divides.

Keywords: ecological limits, environmental responsibility, fear, freedom, species loss, political motivation, joy