Review: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
In 2019 I have decided to present one non-fiction book a month for my readers. This month, after looking at all the changes going on environmentally in the US, and prospective changes in the Amazon after the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil, I decided to read Elizabeth Kolbert's National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning The Sixth Extinction.
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Sixth Extinction is less a view of the future than it is very much of the present. And by present I mean, I mean where we were, as a planet, back when Kolbert published this book back in 2014. We are, of course, in a new present in which ecological damage has been granted permission to accelerate at an even more rapid pace by leaders in places like the USA and Brazil. The Sixth Extinction, or Holocene Extinction has been going on since the dawn of mankind. We have been busily thinning out the competition, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. As she points out, we will soon likely be the only remaining primates on the planet and, in spite of the ardent work of a small fraction of the population dedicated to trying to prevent extinction of endangered species, by the dawn of the 22nd century, anywhere from twenty (conservative) to fifty (probably more realistic) of the species on our planet will have become extinct. The unprecedented rate of species decline since the Industrial Revolution (a human made decline) is what marks this epoch in the planet's history as an mass extinction event. And humans, like a giant asteroid impacting the planet, are at the epicenter of the Sixth Extinction. Tackling trends from the loss of megafauna to the end of calcifying sea organisms (from coral to anything that has a shell in the ocean) due to ocean acidification (global warming's seldom mentioned evil twin) Kolbert details the countless ways humans have reduced the planet's once astonishing diversity.
From what I can see only one of my friends on GR has read this book. A bunch of other people have called it dry or boring or even dystopian fiction. This book, which is written from a layman perspective and therefore quite accessible, is more vital now than when it was written because unlike Silent Spring its assertions are being flatly ignored. The only silver lining to the cloud of our species is that geological and paleological history teaches us one thing- this planet will be just fine without us. Based on the reduction in diversity, which will include what we consider food sources, be assured, our time here is limited.
View all my reviews
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Sixth Extinction is less a view of the future than it is very much of the present. And by present I mean, I mean where we were, as a planet, back when Kolbert published this book back in 2014. We are, of course, in a new present in which ecological damage has been granted permission to accelerate at an even more rapid pace by leaders in places like the USA and Brazil. The Sixth Extinction, or Holocene Extinction has been going on since the dawn of mankind. We have been busily thinning out the competition, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. As she points out, we will soon likely be the only remaining primates on the planet and, in spite of the ardent work of a small fraction of the population dedicated to trying to prevent extinction of endangered species, by the dawn of the 22nd century, anywhere from twenty (conservative) to fifty (probably more realistic) of the species on our planet will have become extinct. The unprecedented rate of species decline since the Industrial Revolution (a human made decline) is what marks this epoch in the planet's history as an mass extinction event. And humans, like a giant asteroid impacting the planet, are at the epicenter of the Sixth Extinction. Tackling trends from the loss of megafauna to the end of calcifying sea organisms (from coral to anything that has a shell in the ocean) due to ocean acidification (global warming's seldom mentioned evil twin) Kolbert details the countless ways humans have reduced the planet's once astonishing diversity.
From what I can see only one of my friends on GR has read this book. A bunch of other people have called it dry or boring or even dystopian fiction. This book, which is written from a layman perspective and therefore quite accessible, is more vital now than when it was written because unlike Silent Spring its assertions are being flatly ignored. The only silver lining to the cloud of our species is that geological and paleological history teaches us one thing- this planet will be just fine without us. Based on the reduction in diversity, which will include what we consider food sources, be assured, our time here is limited.
View all my reviews
Comments
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment, but please also be polite. Spam posts will be deleted and the user blocked from future comments.