Under a White Sky (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert

Book Review

Under a Whilte Sky (2021)

by Elizabeth Kolbert

   Elizabeth Kolbert is a writer for the New Yorker.  Generally speaking, non-fiction works by writers from/for the New York and/or the Atlantic Monthly occupy the slots of what you might call "serious non-fiction science writing."  It's a genre that tends to appeal to politically liberal and well-educated folks, other non fiction audiences having less of an interest in all things scientific.   The theme in this volume is man-make attempts to remedy the catastrophic effects of man-made climate change.  Obviously, Kolbert is a skeptic of every step of the path which leads from our past/present to a future where government's spray dust into the upper atmosphere to cool the surface temperature. 

  Half of the book just sets up the chapters on geo-engineering by looking at past efforts to remedy man-made climate disaster, with a memorable chapter on the Asian carp infiltration of the Great Lakes/Mississippi river eco-systems.  The climate engineering chapters range from the seemingly benign (pumping carbon dioxide back into the ground to turn it into rock) to Strangelovian and/or resembling the actual back-story to the Snowpiercer media property, which goes curiously unreferenced in the pages long interviews with climate scientists that pepper the pages. 

   If you look at climate change from a historical perspective we are no doubt doomed, see the role of climate degradation in the collapse of every pre-modern civilization that didn't make it into the modern era.  Cutting down all the trees, mismanaging the ground water, wasteful agricultural practices- the history is as old as humanity itself.