Elizabeth Kolbert’s previous book The Sixth Extinction further popularized the term ‘Anthropocene’. It is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek word that borrows from the nomenclature of geology, describing a period marked by the human impact on our planet. In the deep future, sandwiched between layers of rock, deposits of plastic and other artificial detritus will remain as near-permanent markers of humanity’s passage.

The period of our existence is also marked by the phenomenal level of extinctions of the other inhabitants of this little planet, mostly killed off by us, either hunted for food or because we have destroyed their habitats, sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, and made their continued survival alongside us untenable.

Of all the extinctions that have happened in the last million years, most have happened in the last ten thousand years. Of all the extinctions in the last ten thousand years, most have occurred in the past one thousand years. Of all the species that went extinct in the last thousand years, the majority have been in the last hundred years – a time where not uncoincidentally the human population has more than quadrupled from 1.8 billion people to today’s 7.8 billion.

Future fossil records will likely also contain a ridiculously large quantity of the bones of the species of bird that humans have helped become the most populous avian ever to have existed, and also the one most preyed on by humans – the humble chicken. At any given moment 23 million chickens share this planet with us, ten times more than any other bird. But it is practically the only species, other than humans, that is thriving if ‘thriving’ can be measured in mere quantitative terms.

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Climate change is real and it’s here

In her latest book Under a White Sky Kolbert turns her attention in part to one of the drivers of our ongoing mass extinction event – climate change. Despite what various fact-averse deniers, fossil fuel profiteers, and ill-informed government officials (some people, not uncoincidentally, fit all three categories) may try to convince you, climate change is here, very real and very serious. Unless radical and vigorous action is taken now and fast the consequences will be very dire indeed. Humanity may not be driven to extinction – after all our species has braved very inhospitable climates in the past, but society and civilization are unlikely to survive in any recognizable form if we continue on our current trajectory.

Not to be Malthusian about it, the real problem is not in our numbers, though that is an aggravating factor, but more our lifestyles and the impact they have on the delicate balance of nature. Capitalism and consumerism are the motors of our national and global economies, but they also contain the seeds of our downfall.

There is no silver bullet solution. Instead, Kolbert suggests that we need silver lead-shot, multiple projectiles aimed at the causes and consequences of the ongoing threat. But, warns the author, while not doing anything keeps us on a disastrous course towards an increasingly uninhabitable planet, whatever we do may have unforeseen and unintended consequences.

Picture a boat on a river teeming with fish, huge carp as large as your lower leg jumping all around you. If your imagination is unequal to the task you can easily find videos of the phenomenon online. In this instance the river, or rather a river system made up of many interconnecting rivers, is in the U.S. where the carp were originally imported from China for their ability to eat up the vegetation and algal blooms clogging and polluting the rivers, a task they performed admirably well. The carp multiplied, out-competing native species. In attempts to control their spread radical action needed to be taken.

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One of the more unusual measures Kolbert describes is the electrification of rivers, meaning electricity is used, not to run household appliances, but to create an invisible barrier the fish cannot cross to protect other waterways. When people first thought about how to deal with algal blooms they never considered that it would mean the absurd measure of electrifying rivers. This is one of the examples of unintended consequences Kolbert describes in great depth in her book.

What does that have to do with climate change? Directly nothing, but it serves as a cautionary model of the type of unexpected outcome or bizarre coping strategy that might be needed to counteract the consequences of our collective actions and inactions that have led us to the brink of a climate emergency. After all, no one deliberately set out to destroy the climate, at least not initially. No one gets in their car or on their motorbike thinking that by doing so they will make a constructive contribution to the cause of climate collapse. It’s just an unfortunate side-effect of getting to work, or school, or the shops, or wherever else a person might need a car to go.

What is more disturbing and deliberately malicious is that once the fossil fuel industry understood the effects of its actions it acted collectively to conceal evidence in order to continue to rake in massive profits that were, and still are, in no small amount often further bolstered by government subsidies.

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It’s still not too late

In early April 2021, a proposed scientific experiment due to be carried out in the little town of Kiruna in northern Sweden was cancelled. It entailed a balloon with a gondola filled with scientific instruments that could take measurements at a height of some twenty-thousand metres above the earth’s surface. In its initial stage, the experiment was simply to see if the balloon and the instruments would work as intended at those altitudes. The next phase of the proposed experiment is what got it cancelled.

Kolbert in Under a White Sky, and Bill Gates, writing in his recent climate-centric book, aptly and optimistically titled How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, and even science-fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson in his latest Cli-Fi novel Ministry for the Future (a highly recommended read for anyone interested in climate issues), all discuss a process referred to as geo-engineering. Despite its sinister connotations, the process is really quite simple.

Readers old enough to remember blackboards and chalk from their school days may recall the ‘dusters’ used to wipe the blackboards clean. After a while, the dusters become so clogged with chalk dust that they can’t absorb any more and are no longer up to the job. At this moment the teacher delegates a young student to take the duster outside and beat it against a designated wall or piece of ground, raising clouds of very fine particles of chalk dust. A particularly diligent student may even reappear in the classroom coated in a ghostly layer of white dust.

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While geoengineering can use many different substances, one that is often suggested is a substance very similar to this chalk dust, namely calcium carbonate. The idea is to release it high in the upper atmosphere, creating artificial clouds that are highly reflective, bouncing a portion of the sun’s rays back out into space whence they came. Calcium carbonate is cheap and non-toxic. Eventually, it will rain back to earth and be absorbed by the soil with little or no ill effect. The next phase of the cancelled experiment was to release a small quantity of this dust and then use the instruments in the balloon’s gondola to measure the effects of this action. This was objectionable to certain parties.

To work on a planetary level the amount of calcium carbonate, or any other reflective substance used, would have to be significant, effectively shrouding the planet in a shield of dust that would possibly turn the sky from blue to white, thus the ‘White Sky’ of the title of Kolbert’s book.

While educated guesses see geoengineering as a temporary stopgap that might buy us time to decarbonize the energy sector, replacing fossil fuels with other cleaner energy sources, including more solar, wind, green hydrogen and possibly next-generation nuclear power, others are worried that it might actually delay moving away from fossil fuels.

But of equal concern are the actual effects of what essentially amounts to dimming the sun might have on agriculture. In order to get a clearer picture of the potential benefits and risks, climatologists, and even politicians, who will ultimately be the ones responsible for deploying the technology, need more data, which is exactly what the cancelled experiment was meant to provide.

Kolbert was prescient in her book, foreseeing precisely this scenario, warning that we might eventually have no option but to fill the sky with chalk dust in order to mitigate the imminent snowballing of climate collapse once we pass the tipping point of two degrees Celsius increase in mean global temperatures.

We are better off knowing as much as possible about any potential unforeseen consequences before it is necessary rather than discovering them after the fact, lest we find ourselves having to deploy absurd solutions analogous to electrifying rivers.

But sadly, these decisions are in the hands of a dismally ill-informed or wilfully blind political elite, often beholden to a climate destructive fossil fuel industry, in turn, funded by a largely ethically apathetic financial sector, a worrying situation that makes books like Kolbert’s all the more urgent and important.

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Cover image by John Kleiner.