His Book Review: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)

Why he read this book: On lists of best books for 2014

Would he recommend this book: Yes

His review: I am an admitted and unrepentant tree hugger. I recycle everything, so much that I struggle with putting anything in the trash, which conflicts with my other drive against clutter and hoarding. I live in a metroplex where trees are the villain in a morality play concocted by land developers, who perceive any land without bricks and pavement as a sin against capitalism. Nature? No, its “undeveloped land” just wanting for the baptism of leveling. I don’t get out into nature as much as I want or should, but I carry the guilt of humanity’s war against it with me every day.

So I came into Kolbert’s book with the anxiety of a true believer–I expected her book just to deepen my environmental depression. After reading her scientific explorations on the historical extinctions that earth has faced, however, I am actually relieved. What I took from her book is that extinctions are part of the historical record, for various reasons. Sometimes because of natural selection, others because of bad timing on the part of the extinct; sometimes just bad luck. Our current path towards self-destruction is uniquely, perhaps, only in the speed in which we head towards the cliff. Species come and go, but nature moves forward. Once we’ve met our (what seems to be inevitable) end, other species will rise.

This is comforting to me. If humans were so smart, we’d do what we could to save ourselves. But we cannot see that far–our vision is solely on today. Ask the farmers in California about water, and they only see their crops and not 10 or 20 years down the line, when all the water they’ve sucked from the ground is gone. Kolbert has helped me turn my anxiety into acceptance. We’ll have a fantastic and horrible run, then go quietly into the darkness with the dodo and the dinosaurs.

Kolbert, I must be clear, is not making this point. I’m sure that her goal is to try to get us to understand what we are doing on and to the planet, and to understand that extinction is not solely a human-caused phenomenon. Her book is well written and engaging, particularly in trying to explain the esoterica of scientific data. She takes us around the world, to places where scientists are trying to understand the past, and others where they are trying to save the present. These are thoughtful, curious people trying to figure out where we’ve been and where we are going.

This is a book well worth reading. It provides perspective on our world. Where you see the future of that world is up to you.