Under a White Sky: Exploring the Possibilities of Our Natural Future

TheGannet: The first part of this book is rather tedious - it goes into far too much technical detail, is US-centric and not that interesting (unless you’re fascinated by hydrology). However, the book then livens up considerably, with lots of insightful information about the (often crazy) methods being considered to combat climate change. It’s all quite depressing (similar to “The Sixth Extinction”), but, given recent events, you can sadly see the urgency of the crisis and the reason why the author takes that stance.

United Kingdom on Jul 23, 2023

Amazon Customer: I highly recommend reading this and teaching it to your children

Canada on Apr 28, 2023

Steven M. Johnson: I loved THE SIXTH EXTINCTION and am now two-thirds through UNDER A WHITE SKY. It takes my breath away thinking about how intelligent she is! She grasps and then turns around and shares extremely complex, tediously detailed, intricate information with the reader in a way that the reader can grasp it. She has disciplined herself to take the trouble to understand something and then to use clear English to convey the information to the reader! A master!

United States on Apr 25, 2023

abc: J'avais adoré la sixième extinction.
Je m'attendais à des projets de géo-ingénierie glibaux et défis scientifiques.
Mais la, à un tiers du livre on en est encore sur les canaux américains et les espèces invasives...
Il lui manque l'élan et l'ouverture de son précédent livre.
Mais cela reste bien écrit.

France on Apr 19, 2023

Sue Lyle: Well researched. Readable. So depressing. We have made such a mess of our beautiful planet. The hubris of humankind is our downfall. Lots I didn’t know about the unintended consequences of our interference with natural systems. It confirmed what I suspected. Technological innovation is not going to save us. The future is bleak. Better start building fresh liner communities now.

United Kingdom on Sep 15, 2022

A. Thomas: This book has a lot of serious information. If it’s honing to of any use to you , then it will require active reading, note taking etc. The complex social involvement of political and business interests that already exist with the spread of non- native species of plants and animals in North America, Australia, South America etc. Since the 19th century gives this reader a reason to pause in his quest to find the “right, simple, effective strategy” which would require an unimaginable level of cooperation between the EU, Asia,and North America. The likely scenario is that as get closer to deadlines by the year 2030 and beyond, partial programs will be launched by various combinations of government and public, and business interest’s. The result isn’t optimistic but it will be a reality.

United States on Apr 02, 2022

Amazon Customer: The bizarre strategies applied to coping with or reducing the effects of climate change described in Kolbert's book were intriguing and scary at the same time.

Germany on Jan 29, 2022

Christine Liu: Elizabeth Kolbert is one of my favorite nonfiction authors. She has such a knack for writing in a clear, compelling way that makes you think and marvel and ask questions you've never considered before. In her previous book, The Sixth Extinction, she catalogs all the ways in which humans have drastically changed the natural world, ushering the new age of the Anthropocene. Under a White Sky is an exploration of the ways scientists around the world are trying to undo those changes. There are people engineering unique solutions to combat a variety of environmental threats: invasive carp in the Chicago River and cane toads in Australia, Louisiana's rapidly disappearing Mississippi River delta, rare species that now depend entirely on human conservation for their continued survival, and, perhaps most pressingly, the problem of rising carbon emissions and global climate change.

That there are brilliant minds working innovatively to solve these problems inspires optimism. But these sobering portraits really highlight the extreme human measures it takes to keep at bay the problems caused by humans interfering with nature in the first place. We've already transformed the planet; how...

United States on Mar 11, 2021

Jack Hicks: Under A White Sky, The Nature of The Future, Elizabeth Kolbert, 2021
In 2015 Elizabeth Kolbert won the Pulitzer Prize for her book the Sixth Extinction. In my review of that book, I wrote: Kolbert is not a scientist but a reporter and writer for The New Yorker magazine and as such her book is structured as a series of bylines as she travels around the world reporting on scientists investigating extinctions in both the present and the past. As in that book she adopts the same format but this time investigating “how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation”.
Ice cores from the Antarctic and Greenland have shown that the last 10,000 years of earths history have been the most benign and stable climatological periods in the last 100,000 years. During this time, we have been able to develop agriculture, an amazing technological and a pervasive globe encompassing culture with a population now of almost 8 billion people. Without this unusually stable climate most of our current civilization would probably have not evolved or been possible. Up to this point we humans have taken this for granted...

United States on Mar 01, 2021