Carl Safina: scientific, ethical, and cultural aspects of our links with the environment.

Transmission 102: Interview with Carl Safina

Carl Safina is a marine ecologist, author, and founder of The Safina Center. He graduated with a degree in environmental science from the State University of New York at Purchase and earned his master’s and doctorate in ecology from Rutgers University, where he researched seabirds. Safina spent a decade working to reform U.S. fishing regulations and ban highseas drift nets. His writings focus on the complex relationship between humans and nature, particularly the effects of ocean changes on wildlife.

Safina has received numerous honors, including the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals, a MacArthur “genius” grant, Pew and Guggenheim Fellowships, and book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies. His work has appeared in publications such as CNN.com, The Huffington Post, National Geographic, TIME, Audubon, and The New York Times. He currently holds the endowed chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.

Carl Safina’s official site; Carl Safina Center; Facebook, Instagram

He is the founding president of The Safina Center and the inaugural holder of the Carl Safina Endowed Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University.

When did you first get interested in nature and when do you understand you wanted to carve a path in ecology? Can you share a specific moment where thinking about animal behaviour deeply influenced your views on human responsibility towards other species?

I was interested as a little city boy. Even though I lived in Brooklyn, New York, my parents took me to the zoo and the aquarium and the natural history museum, and my father raised canaries in our apartment. And from the time I was 7 until I was 9, I raised pigeons (with my father’s help of course). Then we moved to the suburbs and there was a bit more actual nature there.

What are the most significant challenges you have faced in your career? Throughout your career, have there been moments of doubt or challenge that made you question your path? If so, how did you overcome them?

I never thought I could actually make a living related to nature or conservation. I was in my mid 30s before I realized it was really working. I changed my work three times. In the 1980s I studied seabirds and hawks. In the 1990s I got very involved in fisheries policy reform. Since then I have been writing books about the human relationship with the living world and how it could be better.

You’ve had the opportunity to observe some of the most remarkable wildlife on the planet. Can you share with us a meaningful experience that has had the most profound impact on you, and how has it shaped your approach to conservation?

No one experience had “the most” profound impact. But when I was fifteen I saw an abandoned osprey nest. I had been reading that DDT was causing all the eggs to break and all the older birds were dying out and they would probably go extinct. But to see that huge nest, and to think that those birds were there just a few years earlier and might never be there again, and that I would probably never see them, that really shook me. But DDT was banned right after that. And the birds started coming back over the next 30 years. And now they are common again. And it’s a similar story with peregrine falcons and bald eagles and whales; and the fish that I focused a lot of conservation work on are also recovering. So although we have enormous problems, we also have some stunning successes that show that conservation works—when we decide we want to coexist with life, and not extinguish life.

His books include Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace; Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel; Song for the Blue Ocean; Eye of the Albatross; The View From Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World; and others.

In your book “Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel” you explore the emotional and intellectual lives of animals. What do you believe is the most compelling evidence for animal consciousness, and how does this understanding challenge our traditional views of human exceptionalism?

The most compelling evidence is that we have the same vertebrate nervous system with the same neurotransmitters and hormones that create mood and motivation. It’s all on a continuum, and we inherited it from our species’ earlier ancestors. It’s not uniquely human to have a mind, or emotions; those are ancient. The human mind is unique. So is the elephant mind, and the whale mind.

How do you think acknowledging animal emotions could reshape our approach to conservation and wildlife management? 

I think the biggest implications are with our farming methods. Highdensity, confined animal operations are factories of suffering. We used to do much better than how we have completely industrialized a lot of meat production as though we have no obligation to consider the suffering we create. It is wrong to raise animals as badly as we often do.

Do you think that nowadays different cultures and societies start having more ethical considerations? How do you see human interactions with wildlife, especially in contexts like zoos, aquariums, and conservation breeding programs? What do you think should be done to evolve a better relationship with animals?

There are some improvements in awareness, yes. There are good zoos and bad zoos. Good zoos work for the animals and increase public understanding and actively promote conservation. Their standards have improved tremendously. Conservation breeding programs are often crucial, and almost always done very well.

Animals and humans every day are influenced by the environment. Many people deny that we are facing years of huge changes that require important decisions and actions. How do you think the environmental movement can more effectively communicate the urgency of conservation issues to the general public?

That is a very important question. I think the problem is not so much that the environmentalists are not communicating, I think it is that the messages are overwhelmed by the inertia of how we all have learned to live, by propaganda from oil companies and the political rightwing (especially in the U.S.), a failure of our education system, and by the fact that people would rather be entertained than be told to support new policies that will shift our thinking and our responsibility to ourselves and future generations. Humans are bad at longterm thinking. Religions are bad at facing reality. And the urgent always overtakes the important. Wars, the economy, heaven, and fashion get our attention more than messages about the state of the world and the planetary course we are on.

What do you believe is the most pressing environmental issue today that is underestimated? Which role do you believe narrative has in changing public attitudes toward environment and conservation? With so much disinformation in the media, what tactics do you recommend for getting accurate, science-based information about the environment to a wide audience?

Last question first: In school we learn math at different levels year after year. Same with history, and so on. We never learn ecology, which is the study of relationships in the world. It’s the most important subject and we are never taught it. Economists have no idea. Politicians know zero about it. Religions teach that everything will be OK in heaven. This failure of education results in a global populace largely ignorant of environmental issues. When we get our high school diplomas and are congratulated on being educated, we don’t know where our food, water, energy, or the contents of our material lives comes from, where our wastes go, or the identities of the most common plants and animals. What we do know is: how to buy things. We are educated not to be citizens but to be: consumers. That is how we are useful, and that is what we are called. To be a consumer is to be denied knowledge of consequences.

Education about a human place in the real world—an ecological perspective—is essential but almost nonexistent. Further, disinformation campaigns confuse the public about climate and energy issues. The project has succeeded, and it is causing a catastrophe. To address your next questions: the most underestimated problems are human overpopulation and the extinction crisis. To get better information to the public requires a public that is fundamentally educated to receive it and to recognize misleading information. At my university, I teach critical reading, meaning how to tell if you are being misled. The students have no idea, no protective filters against disinformation. They have never been taught to evaluate whether the right questions are being posed, the full story being given to them, or how to check authoritative sources and avoid junk sources. Social media makes this much worse. These are fundamental matters of education. The groundwork is laid when we are young.

His eleventh book, Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe, was released in October 2023.

What is your opinion about finding a balance between the need for economic development with environmental protection, particularly in developing countries?

A bad environment is bad for people, for their health, for their dignity. Good development promotes a clean environment, open space, and conservation of plants and animals. Bad development is much more common, and much worse.

Given your extensive work on marine ecosystems, what is the most underestimated aspect of ocean conservation, what do you see as the most pressing threats, that deserves more attention from both the public and policymakers? What are the most promising solutions for addressing these challenges?

Overfishing, pollution, and climate change (which includes not just warming seas but the other effects such as acidification and reduced oxygen) are the big issues. The solutions will be a long, slow, easy decline in human overpopulation, pollution controls, and a shift to clean energy sources.

What are the most significant impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, and how can we mitigate these effects while ensuring the longterm sustainability of ocean resources?

Most significantly, carbon dioxide is creating acidic waters that are killing corals worldwide, warming that is doing the same as well as pushing ocean animals around in ways that are in some cases making it hard for them to survive. These problems all stem from 8 billion people relying on fossil fuels that warm and acidify, lower ability of warm water to hold oxygen, and farm chemicals and fertilizers and producing pollution.

Where do you see the future of conservation efforts heading, and what are your hopes for the next generation of environmentalists? As someone who has dedicated his life to understanding and protecting nature, what advice would you give to young people aspiring to make a difference in the field of conservation?

I’d say the biggest things are: full citizenship and economic empowerment for all women so they can control their bodies and their lives, reconnecting fragmented landscapes, ending fossil fuels and ending singleuse plastics, recovering endangered species through habitat expansion and pollution reduction, ending subsidies that finance overfishing, secularizing all education, and creating an ecologically literate citizenry. For young people I’d say that situations that seemed hopeless when I was young have improved greatly, only because some people refused to give up and refused to accept defeat. Conservation is the most hopeful profession, and among the most important.

I read  on your page ‘Perfection Isn’t Possible, Improvement Isn’t Hard,’ and I understand your point of view. Yes, food is indeed complicated and personal! What’s your opinion on the role of developed countries? Shouldn’t schools be responsible for teaching and helping families understand that our food choices have a serious impact on the health of the environment (depleted oceans and lands, contaminated air, etc.)?

If schools don’t educate about what we put into our bodies every day, about nutrition, about farming and where food comes from and how it gets to us, it’s one indication that education is failing to teach the things that really matter, and making us easy prey for false claims and corporate profiteers.

A special thank to Mayra Marino
Photos courtesy of Carl Safina

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.