If extinction is a morbid topic, mass extinction is, well, massively so. Once again packaging a challenging topic in a way that not only educates but entertains, Kolbert sums up her strategy for The Sixth Extinction beautifully in the opening pages: She’s well-placed to address it though, having already tackled that other, equally looming, environmental truth – global climate change – in her second and best-known book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, nature, and climate change (2006). This is a question American journalist and author Elizabeth Kolbert likely contemplated when she sat down to write her latest book, The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history. Why would anyone want to spend days, or weeks, reading about all the species we can’t afford to lose, but probably will, if things are left to continue the way they are? But extinction, and mass extinction all the more, is a tough sell. If a species of tiny frog or snail or blood-sucking sandfly disappears from the face of the Earth, it should mean something to more of us than just the team of conservationists fighting tirelessly to save it.
Which is why extinction should be a bigger issue than it is in privileged societies such as ours. No matter how comfortable our lives become, we can never escape the fear of losing that which we cannot replace no matter how much we miss it when it’s gone. Whether it’s an old family photo lost in a move, the death of a loved one, or the trust you can’t repair from the lie you can’t take back. There is nothing more terrifying than the irreversible.
This book details what may be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Tags: Amazon rainforest/ Andes/ climate change/ Edgardo Griffith/ Elizabeth Kolbert/ Great Barrier Reef/ Panamanian golden frogs ELIZABETH KOLBERT The Sixth Extinction: An unnatural history.
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