NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?5 ideas for summer reading—Bill Gates, GatesNotes • “Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In
Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In
The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic,
Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on a journey through a near future in which the Earth's climate has been drastically altered by human activity. The result is a world that is both strange and familiar, a place where the old rules no longer apply.
Kolbert begins her journey in the Arctic, where the melting ice caps have revealed new land. This new land is home to a variety of strange and wonderful creatures, including a giant jellyfish that glows in the dark. She then travels to the Great Barrier Reef, where coral bleaching has caused the reef to lose its color and vitality.
Along the way, Kolbert meets scientists who are working to understand the changes that are happening to the planet, and she learns about the potential consequences of these changes. She also meets people who are trying to adapt to the new world, such as the farmers who are growing crops in the desert using new technologies.
Under a White Sky is a thought-provoking and timely book that explores the complex relationship between humans and the natural world. Kolbert's writing is clear and engaging, and she does an excellent job of weaving together science, history, and personal narrative. This book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in the future of our planet.
