Sydney Faught

In “Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce,” Mark Sagoff (2001) asserts that “environmentalists cannot be animal liberationists. Animal liberationists cannot be environmentalists” (p. 42). In this article, I explore and refute this claim. As a result of structuring his argument around the work of Peter Singer and Aldo Leopold, I argue Sagoff too quickly dismisses rights-based approaches to animal liberation. Drawing on Thomas Pogge’s (2008) institutional framework for human rights, I present a rights-based foundation upon which animal liberationism and environmentalism can be based compatibly.