Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

The Sixth Extinction's Pulitzer Prize–winning author revisits how humans has changed the ecosystem and poses the question, "Can we change nature this time to save it, after doing so much damage?"

A prophecy that has come to pass states that man should rule "over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." We are believed to be living in a new geological period called the Anthropocene due to the extent of human impact on the planet.

Elizabeth Kolbert examines critically the new world we are building in Under a White Sky. She encounters researchers working to protect the rarest fish in the world, which only inhabits a lone, tiny pool in the center of the Mojave Desert. She goes to an aquarium in Australia where scientists are attempting to create "super coral" that can withstand higher temperatures; a lava field in Iceland where engineers are converting carbon emissions into stone; and a lab at Harvard where physicists are thinking about launching tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in an attempt to reflect sunlight back to space and cool the planet.

Kolbert suggests that one way to view human civilization is as a 10,000-year experiment in breaking the laws of nature. She examined how our ability to cause devastation has changed the natural world in The Sixth Extinction. She now looks at how people are beginning to believe that the very actions that have put our planet in danger are the only thing that can save it. Under a White Sky is a wholly unique analysis of the difficulties we confront that is at once horrifying, uplifting, and darkly humorous.