Species extinctions and why they matter: A Quadcast interview with Ryan Darr

In the new episode of the YDS podcast series, Ryan Darr, Assistant Professor of Religion, Ethics, and Environment and an expert on multispecies justice, discusses rapidly accelerating species extinctions and why they matter from an ethical and theological perspective. Darr also discusses the climate crisis and biodiversity loss and why they require less of an individual response and more communal action.

 

Darr notes that some threatened species have survived on this planet for hundreds of millions of years. “There’s something deeply troubling,” he says, ”about the thought that species that have been on this Earth for this long are potentially being wiped out by us.”

 

 

Ryan Darr joined the YDS faculty in the Fall of 2024. In addition to his work on multispecies justice, he pursues research on issues including environmental ethics, structural injustice, ethical theory, and the history of religious and philosophical ethics. He is currently writing a book that defends an account of environmental and multispecies justice as a framework for thinking ethically about the crisis of biodiversity loss and mass extinction. His first book, The Best Effect: Theology and the Origins of Consequentialism, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2023.

 

The professor objects to Christian theology that gives greater value to humans over other creatures, arguing that all creatures reflect God in different ways. “I think it’s hubris to think that we can tell which creatures reflect God more or less than any other creatures,” he says. 

 

The YDS Quadcast is hosted by Emily Judd ‘19 M.A.R., who is Senior Communications Specialist at the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, an international humanitarian organization. She previously worked as a journalist in the Middle East.