There have been seven evolutionary eras since the Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and there have been five mass extinctions. We are currently in what many call the eighth era, which is the Anthropocene, that of humans, which may include the sixth mass extinction. To put it into a perspective that is more easily understood, if the past 4.5 billion years are put into one calendar year, life on the planet began with lightning strikes into the so-called, “primordial soup”. Dinosaurs, in their various species, lived on Earth for a mid-portion of about six months of that year. However, humans have only been around for the last 30 seconds of December 31st… Yet, humans have seemingly had a greater impact on the environment in that “30 seconds” than any disease and geological disasters that have made species extinct over the past 4.5 billion years.

As such, we have to question our moral and ethical duties to other species as our human population continues to grow beyond its evolutionary and, for lack of a better term, our animal species “carrying-capacity”. As such, we have developed international, national, and local laws that help to internalize our morals and ethics with regard to the environment, which is much different from the more social and legal aspects of when we all had to take the MPRE. Yet, the fundamentals are the same. However, unlike the rules governing the MPRE, environmental ethics and the law have an interpretive moral balance between each and every person (and therefore, each and every lawyer) in the Anthropocene Era.

*This course qualifies as a Transitional course and can be taken by both Experienced and Newly Admitted attorneys in NY. For information about permissible formats for Newly Admitted attorneys, please click here.