Since pollution harms others, there are no problems in terms of Mill's principle, in the state acting to check it. Anti-pollution measures would be restrictions on liberty to protect individuals from harm, usually where they themselves are incapable of protecting themselves. Not to be forgotten is how severely pollution from cars, energy sources, lead, mercury, pesticides, fertilizers, may affect health and even life itself.
What is of importance here is that the restrictions on liberty that might be justified in terms of conservation and pollution alone, may be vast, and such as to transform the liberal society completely. Firstly, there would be the need for an effective world organization, with a democratic government much remoter from its source, than is any present democracy, and hence one in which bureaucrats would have vastly more power. Secondly, many ecological economists argue that a static, no[-]growth economy is essential for conservation and for a significant lessening of pollution. What controls would be needed, and what costs would be involved, in bringing this about? If such economists are right, this would involve vast interference with the right to engage in private enterprise production, and hence a vast curtailment of individual liberties. Many economists claim that a no-growth economy would result in vast unemployment. If this is so, there would have to be further losses of negative liberty via massive taxation to provide the unemployed with a guaranteed income; and even so they would suffer a considerable loss of positive liberty and of opportunities to be self-developing through work. Further, ordinary individuals are likely severely to be restricted in their use of energy—cars, appliances in the home, etc. Other restrictions noted as being likely to be necessary are on the owning of domestic pets. Given the pollution that occurs from pesticides and fertilizers, and the wastage of food to domestic pets, this seems an obvious further likely restriction. It further brings out the kinds of far-reaching implications of the limitations that may spring from a concern for conservation and for a reduction of pollution. Liberty as we know and prize it would no longer exist. The state that would result from this extension of the Millian principle would be liberal in that it rested on an application of Mill's principle. Yet few of us should wish to describe such a state as a liberal state. The sacrifice of liberty for the sake of survival and prevention of harm would seem disproportionate, the cost in terms of loss of liberty being far too great.
(H. J. McCloskey, "Ecological Values, the State, and the Individual's Right to Liberty," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 [July 1980]: 212-32, at 225-6)
Note from KBJ: One word: "prescient." McCloskey shows how liberalism, taken to its logical conclusion, leads to totalitarianism.
Note 2 from KBJ: Progressives push liberalism toward egalitarianism. They do this by, among other things, interpreting liberty as positive liberty. Conservatives resist this push, insisting that liberty is negative. Positive liberty and negative liberty are in conflict. An increase in positive liberty requires a decrease in negative liberty, and vice versa. Both progressives and conservatives can claim, with some plausibility, to be liberals. They merely have different interpretations of liberalism's key concept: liberty.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 