Saving the Future: Elizabeth Kolbert with Jeff Goodell

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author asks in her new book whether humanity, after doing so much damage to the natural world, can change nature—this time to save it.  

People have, by now, directly transformed more than half the ice-free land on earth," writes Elizabeth Kolbert in her new book, Under a White Sky. There's no historical comparison. "Humans are producing no-analog climates, no-analog ecosystems, a whole no-analog future...we face a no-analog predicament. If there is to be an answer," she claims, "it's going to be more control...not so much the control of nature but the control of the control of nature." Kolbert meets biologists who are trying to preserve  the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

In The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert explored how humanity's capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now, with Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Goodell, she will discuss whether the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are also the only hope for its salvation?  

LIVE from NYPL is made possible by the support of Library patrons and friends, as well as by the continuing generosity of Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos, and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Public Education Endowment Fund.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. For her work at The New Yorker, where she's a staff writer, she has received two National Magazine Awards and the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children. 

Jeff Goodell's most recent book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, was a New York Times Critics Top Book of 2017. He is the author of five previous books, including How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate, and a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone, where he has covered climate change for more than a decade. As a commentator on energy and climate issues, he has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, ABC, Fox News and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is a Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. 

GET THE BOOK

If you have a NYPL library card—or live in New York state and want to apply for one now—you can borrow Under a White Sky for free with our e-reader app SimplyE. The title is available in accessible formats for community members who do not use standard print. Find out more at: nypl.org/talkingbooks. You can also request this book, and more, for pickup at one of our Grab & Go locations. 

Readers everywhere who wish to purchase copies of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future can do so at The New York Public Library Shop. Proceeds benefit the New York Public Library. 

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Elizabeth Kolbert © John Kleiner