Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, by Elizabeth Kolbert
Review by Dave Gamrath
Author Elizabeth Kolbert writes about our need to control our control of nature.
Book Review:
Over the centuries, humans have endeavored to control nature. Unfortunately, in the process, often our solutions have created new problems. Author Elizabeth Kolbert describes her book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, as a “book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems.”
Kolbert’s book has three sections. The first focuses on two river-related problems. The first has to do with the Chicago River, where authorities decided in 1887 to reverse the flow direction away from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi river delta. Decades later, in 1963, the Asian carp were brought to the US by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to keep aquatic weeds in check. A powerful invasive species, the carp took over waterways, wiping out or endangering many native species. If these carp get into Lake Michigan, it would be devastating. To keep Asian carp from swimming upriver and invading Lake Michigan, electric barriers have been installed in the river to turn the carp back. Now, what type of problems could electrifying a river cause?
Next, Kolbert looks at efforts to control Mississippi river flooding, which resulted in the shrinking of the Louisiana coastline by more than 2000 square miles since the 1930s. Thousands of miles of levees, flood walls and revetments have been erected to manage the Mississippi. Fresh sediment that would have solidified and expanded the coastline is now washed out to sea. The more water that is pumped to stop flooding, the faster New Orleans and the coast of southern Louisiana sinks. The oil industry expedited the problem by digging canals through the wetlands, causing the reeds and marshes to die, allowing in more salt water, which cause even greater die-off.
Kolbert next examines human activity threatening many species. Fortunately, we humans often want to avoid being the cause of species extinction, and thus have at times worked towards rescuing some species that we have pushed to the brink. These rescued species are now “conservation-reliant”: totally reliant on humans to survive. At a minimum, there are thousands of species in this camp. An example Kolbert gives is the Devil’s Hole pupfish, located at the edge of Death Valley. Human activity drove this fish to near extinction, but extensive efforts were employed to save it. Some support these efforts, whereas others strongly resist them, resulting in “Kill the Pupfish” bumper stickers. Methods in which humans give assistance to endangered species are many, including captive breeding, managed burns, guided migration, hand-pollination, artificial insemination, predator-avoidance training and many more. This list keeps growing.
Kolbert “dives deep” into the problems humans have created for coral reefs. Worldwide, coral reefs are homes to millions of different species. One out of four of all ocean creatures spends part of their life on a reef. Increasing water temperatures are killing reefs. Researchers are calling what is happening a “catastrophic collapse”. Fossil fuel emissions are making the seas more acidic. A few more decades of rising emissions will cause coral reefs to “stop growing and begin dissolving.” Unfortunately, the long-term prospects of coral reefs are very poor.
Efforts are now underway to create a “super coral” that could better withstand the ecological changes humans are causing. We’re trying to employ what is called “assisted evolution”. The plan is to seed reefs with this new breed that can hopefully withstand the higher temperatures. Other efforts include deploying underwater robots to reseed reefs, developing an ultrathin film to shade reefs, pumping deep water to the surface to provide corals with heat relief, as well as cloud brightening, which involves spraying tiny droplets of salt water into the air to create an artificial fog. Experts at Australia’s Great Barrier Reef do not believe that the reef can be preserved by these measures, but hope they can extend the reef’s life for twenty or thirty years to give humans time to reduce our carbon emissions. Kolbert also discusses efforts to use gene editing to exterminate invasive species, as well as to try and bring back extinct species.
The third section of Kolbert’s book focuses on climate change, which human activity has undeniably caused. At the start of the industrial revolution in 1776, humans annually emitted about fifteen million tons of CO2 into the air. Now it’s up to forty billion tons. One out of three molecules of CO2 in the air today were put there by humans.
We typically talk about cutting carbon emissions, but “cutting emissions is at once absolutely essential and insufficient.” If we somehow cut emissions in half, CO2 levels wouldn’t drop; they’d just rise less quickly. Kolbert discusses efforts at carbon capture, which is extremely difficult and expensive. Efforts being studied to remove carbon from the air include “enhanced weathering” (spreading crushed basalt over croplands in hot, humid climates to react with CO2 and draw it out of the air); dissolving the mineral olivine into the oceans to absorb CO2; planting trees to create massive new forests; and forcing smoke from energy plants underground. The key question about carbon capture is “how do you create a $100 billion industry for a product that nobody wants?”
Kolbert next examines solar geoengineering, which would involve using a massive fleet of aircraft to fly continuously fly at 60,000 feet and release a reflective element, such as sulfur dioxide or calcium carbonate, to scatter sunlight back to space. What could go wrong? This idea has been described as “dangerous beyond belief” but also as “inevitable”, given our lack of action on climate. The title of Kolbert’s book comes from the change in appearance of the sky that would result from this: a white sky would replace the blue. Many argue for doing “all of the above”, including cutting emissions, carbon capture, and geoengineering.
Kolbert writes that humans have created a new epoch: the Anthropocene, or the age of man. Human activity has resulted in a warming atmosphere, warming waters, ocean acidification, sea-level rise, deglaciation, desertification and more. Kolbert won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous book The Sixth Extinction, which examines how extinction rates are now hundreds if not thousands of times higher due to human activity. Can we solve these problems? Kolbert quotes Albert Einstein: “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Will governments have the political will to force needed changes? So far, not so good.
Reviewer Opinion:
Very well written.
Reviewer Rating of Book:
Thumb up.