In Nature's Interests?: Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics

This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"—the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desir…