- In the book by Kolbert, the dominance of humans over nature, and how they have destroyed it over the centuries is explored. The impact of humans is so pervasive on the planet that it is said that we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. (Kolbert)
- Human civilization has defied nature. Humans armed with the capacity for destruction have reshaped the natural world. From the Kolbert book. The book examines the challenges we face. It offers a nice account of engineering projects that have reshaped the planet. (Kolbert)
- “If Chicago is the City of the Big Shoulders, the Sanitary and Ship Canal might be thought of as its Oversized Sphincter. Before it was dug, all of the city’s waste-the human excrement, the cow manure, the sheep dung, the rotting viscera from the stockyards-ran into the Chicago River, which in some spots was so thick with filth it was said a chicken could walk from one bank to the other without getting her feet wet. From the river, the muck flowed into Lake Michigan. The lake was-and remains- the city’s sole source of drinking water. Typhoid and cholera outbreaks were routine”. (Kolbert, p. 5)
- “In a world of synthetic gene drives, the border between the human and the natural, between the laboratory and the wild, already deeply blurred, all but dissolves. In such a world, not only do people determine the conditions under which evolution is taking place, people can-again, in principle-determine the outcome”. (Kolbert, p. 131).
- “During the first few months of 2020, a vast unsupervised experiment took place. As the coronavirus raged, billions of people were ordered to stay home. At the peak of the lockdown, in April, global CO2 emissions were down an estimated 17 % compared with the comparable period the previous year”. (Kolbert, p. 153)
- “Since 1990, temperatures on the ice sheet have risen by almost 3oC. During the same period, ice loss from Greenland has increased sevenfold, from thirty billion tons a year to an average of more than two hundred fifty billion tons a year. … This summer, a record breaker, Greenland shed almost six hundred billion tons of ice, producing enough water to fill a pool the size of California to a depth of 4 feet”. (Kolbert, p. 198).
(Book) Kolbert, E. (2021). Under a White Sky. The nature of the future. (1st ed., p. xx). Crown Publishing.