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What it argues
The Sixth Extinction is Elizabeth Kolbert's account of the mass extinction event currently underway — the sixth in Earth's history, and the first caused by a single species. Kolbert spent years traveling to field sites around the world, accompanying scientists studying species in active decline: frogs in Panama, bats in upstate New York, rhinos in Sumatra, corals in the Great Barrier Reef. The result is a book that makes an abstract global crisis legible through a series of vivid, specific encounters.
The structure is roughly historical. Kolbert opens with the concept of extinction itself, which scientists didn't accept until Cuvier proved it from fossils in the late 18th century. She then traces the five previous mass extinctions — the end-Ordovician, the late Devonian, the end-Permian, the end-Triassic, and the end-Cretaceous — before turning to the present. What connects all five to the sixth is the speed of change. Evolution can adapt to gradual shifts; it cannot adapt to catastrophic ones. The asteroid that ended the Cretaceous was catastrophic. So is the rate at which humans are now altering oceans, atmosphere, and land.
What it gets right
- 1.
We are living through the sixth mass extinction in Earth's history, the first caused by a single species rather than asteroid impact or volcanic activity.
- 2.
The previous five mass extinctions were caused by catastrophic, rapid environmental change. The current one is accelerating because of how quickly humans are altering oceans, atmosphere, and land.
- 3.
Ocean acidification, driven by CO2 absorption, is dissolving the calcium carbonate structures that coral reefs depend on — threatening ecosystems that support roughly a quarter of all marine species.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has covered environmental issues and climate change since 1999. Before The Sixth Extinction, she wrote Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a book on climate change adapted from her magazine reporting. The Sixth Extinction won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2015. Her subsequent book, Under a White Sky, examines human attempts to intervene in natural systems already altered by earlier interventions. Kolbert has received numerous awards for her science journalism and is widely regarded as one of the most important environmental writers working in American long-form nonfiction.
