In the Snow, Talk on "Saving Life on Earth"

A blizzard raged outside the Robert A. Jones ’59 House last Wednesday evening, but inside, the conference room was filled to its capacity of 100.

Students, faculty and community members had braved the biting wind, driving snow and deeply blanketed roads and sidewalks to attend this year’s Scott A. Margolin ’99 Lecture in Environmental Affairs: Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, Kieran Suckling. The Center for Biological Diversity is a unique non-profit that works primarily through the Endangered Species Act and the judicial system to meet conservation goals. Suckling established and oversees the nation’s most extensive endangered species list.

In his talk, “Saving Life on Earth: A Moral Rejoinder to the Anthropocene,” Suckling spoke about the literally earthshattering impact humanity has had on the planet with our cities, agriculture and waste overpowering natural forces, and how this has precipitated the idea of calling our geological period the Anthropocene.

Suckling opined that the most egregious and unethical environmental consequence of human activity is the rapid mass decline of species that, before the nineteenth-century, had persisted through millions of years of great environmental flux. He drew attention to the fact that thousands of species are currently on the verge of extinction at rates up to 10,000 times the natural rate. He warned that the earth is heading toward its sixth-mass extinction, an unprecedented catastrophe because one dominant species, Homo sapiens, are its sole instigators.

The speaker argued that naming this geological age after ourselves would intensify anthropocentricism, exacerbating mankind’s sense of exclusive entitlement over the earth. Suckling pointed out that referring to this era in human terms is not an innovative answer to ecological destruction, but an excuse for reinforcing and exerting human superiority.

“Anthropocene thinking is the cause of the extinction crisis, not its solution,” he said.

Suckling stressed that enormous population growth will rapidly increase biodiversity loss in the near future as development to accommodate the increasing number of people pushes further into dwindling wild habitat. He emphasized the prime moral imperative of preserving natural spaces and the nonhumans that inhabit them. He stated that because animal agriculture is the most ecologically harmful human activity, the most effective step to counter environmental degradation as an individual is to renounce meat.

“Forget the Prius; buy a Hummer and eat a carrot. You’ll do a lot more for the planet that way,” he joked.

Before his presentation, Suckling had met with a group of environmental studies faculty and staff, and dropped in on Klyza’s American Environmental Politics class. The professor expressed his satisfaction with the speaker’s visit to campus and the turnout at the event despite the difficult weather.

“Suckling had a full and good visit to campus—even in the midst of a major snow storm! It was a great testament to our students,” Klyza said.

The biggest takeaway for conservation biology major, Jeannie Bartlett ’15, was Suckling’s perspective on reconciling conservation with the needs of marginalized human groups in the face of land scarcity created by corporations.

“He encouraged us to reframe the perceived conflict so that both conservationists and indigenous people work together against the corporate power structures that have pitted those groups against each other,” she said. “We have already begun to see that kind of collaboration in resistance of the Keystone XL Pipeline where climate activists and First Nations people in Canada and the U.S. have recognized their shared goals and formed a powerful movement.”

Bartlett was, however, hoping for more insight into how the Center for Biological Diversity operates.

“I would have liked to hear more about how his organization actually pursues its work, because from what I’ve read they are very strategic, tenacious and successful,” she said.

Suckling encouraged the audience to think about the repercussions of human dominance over homes of species we are encroaching upon. We left with a profound appreciation for the fundamental reality that our own survival hinges on theirs. He set the stage for a discussion about what we must actively do to curb this ecological disaster, beyond merely playing with new names to characterize an urgent historical problem.