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a framework of law that aims to
ensure genuine access to a decent
life, a more fertile agriculture,
and responsible management of
wilderness and oceans. Freyfogle
ambitiously proposes a thorough
review of modern law to place the
enrichment of our environment
and community at its core.
Any timescale for reform will
be long, says Freyfogle, but we
should still make a start right
away. Activists in environmental
and social fields need to zero in
on the most offensive aspects of
corporate lobbying, property
rights that permit environmental
damage, and welfare inequalities.

“We need positive liberties,
a framework of law that
aims to ensure genuine
access to a decent life”

Any changes these activists
advocate will need a positive spin.
One wonders if Freyfogle’s legal
framework might not already be
forming. Despite hostile winds,
the recent Paris climate summit
made progress, and brought
together governments, NGOs
PABLO LOPEZ LUZ/BARCROFT MEDIA precisely what Freyfogle asks for:
and large investment funds.
And the focus of the agreement is
humanity’s shared ecology.
Can we build on Paris? Quite
possibly. But to judge by Freyfogle
and Morton, whatever form our
efforts take, they must be
Cleaning up places like Mexico City Freyfogle’s work has immediate These personal liberties, accompanied by an accelerated
requires institutional change relevance for both environmental so important in the battle and deeper exchange of learning
campaigning and the social and against medievalism, have been between sciences and humanities.
should stress the promise of business dysfunction that plays extended beyond their purpose Those of us trained in science
a brighter future, rather than such a major part in ecological to corporations and land owners. need to remember that Plato,
motivate by guilt or shame. degradation:inequality,corporate And this extension is indifferent Kant and Weber are key to ensuring
It is reassuring that he can draw power over politics, and abuses of to inequalities in wealth and to that it takes its proper place in
this conclusion from another private property are everywhere business malpractice, both so society, while those from the
branch of the humanities: intimate to ecological ruin. damaging to collective welfare, humanities need encouragement
the history of law. Working on Freyfogle argues that for Freyfogle argues. to delve deeper into the detail of
long-term ecological restoration 250 years, progress in social This means that timber from a the green sciences.
projects made him realise that relations has relied on the fight pristine forest can be sold at profit Perhaps then we can all learn
the barriers to change are not for individual rights, which are as the legal right of the owner, but how to enchant ourselves with
technical, but cultural and moral. mostly “negative liberties”. there is rarely any obligation in practical plans and changed
The shift humanity needs is not This term, first used in the 1950s law regarding the regeneration of behaviours to speed the day when
held back by a lack of information by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, a thousand-year-old ecosystem, good news surpasses the bad. ■
or proposed solutions, but by describes the legal form of an its role in water catchment, or as
the absence of an institutional individual’s right to minimum simple community enjoyment. Ben Collyer is a writer and researcher
imperative to act on them. interference by state and church. We now need positive liberties, based in the UK

20 January 2018 | NewScientist | 43