Review of 'The Sixth Extinction'
Originally Published 04/2022
Elizabeth Kolbert has written a book here that I think has as its main goal improving understanding on our current age; the Anthropocene. An epoch that, as I understand it, started when 'one weedy species' Homosapiens began to destroy/rearrange our environment at a level that elapsed harmony and started endangering other living things. Starting with the Industrial Revolution (even though the Anthropocene could be described as starting earlier) we began to exponentially produce ozone destroying chemicals, pollute the rest of the environment, spread and make swaths of land unlivable, move species around introducing invasives and diseases to ecosystems not equipped for them, etc.
Kolbert tackles one species every chapter to use as an example of something that's faced extinction past or present. She did hands-on, in situ, research for this book and so these personal experiences truly add a sense of perspective and exploration. Sometimes it could feel like all the discoveries and foreign lands have been found already and so the concept of being an explorer does not exist in modernity. But scientists are our modern explorers, making new discoveries through their microscopes and telescopes. And they definitely still have to travel to unique foreign lands to do their work, as Kolbert would quickly tell you. The focus on one species at a time allows Kolbert to explain the whole story of a species. Its place in an ecosystem, how it evolved to be there, and how it came to be endangered are all significant info that gives me as a reader a greater respect for its existence. A true respect that we should have for all living beings, including ourselves. We are in fact the species under review in the final chapter.
Kolbert's writing is digestible for us non-scientists. She details scientific processes that give all sorts of geologists, microbiologists, etc. a glimpse into past events like the Earth's previous five massive extinction events. This behind-the-curtain view of their work makes it appear achievable and seems like it could really inspire younger readers to get into these fields of study.
"The history of the science of extinction can be told as a series of paradigm shifts."
Elizabeth Kolbert introduces scientists/thinkers from across history that had established understandings of how the world works (who all in their own ways helped progress science forward) and how they reacted when new information was uncovered that challenged those understandings. It wasn't pretty. It never is. Paradigm shifts force people to confront their ego and we aren't the best at that. Georges Cuvier fought against the idea of Evolution. The Paleontology community laughed at the 'asteroid impact' hypothesis for the Cretaceous Extinction. More recently the powers that be have used snowballs in congress1 as evidence against the existence of human caused Climate Change. Now, even though a big percentage of the U.S population (even bigger everywhere else) believe Climate Change is real and we should do something about it2, there is very little societal & political will to do anything significant. Cuvier fought against the theory of evolution because it conflicted with what he decided was the truth; at least that didn't significantly hurt others. Our politicians and industry heads today (the powers that be) fight the paradigm shift because it affects their profits and hold on power3. Why we don't do something drastic to change our course is an interesting question to tackle, but it's not what this book is about so it's best left for another time.
As opposed to ascribing blame too much (which anyone who has an honest relationship with the truth will say we are responsible for bringing about the sixth extinction), Kolbert analyzes the situation, well, like a scientist. We've done what we've done because of how we are. We are a species capable of transforming almost anything and we are drawn to doing so. It might be our downfall, but the Earth will be fine. And life on it will more than likely live on. The varieties of life may dwindle drastically, but there will be a bloom of new life eventually.
Favorite Quotes4:
“There are all sorts of seemingly disparate reasons that species are disappearing. But trace the process far enough and inevitably you are led to the same culprit: ‘one weedy species.’” (Pg 18)
"Everything (and everyone) alive today is descended from an organism that somehow survived the impact [of the asteroid]. But it does not follow from this that they (or we) are any better adapted. In times of extreme stress, the whole concept of fitness, at least in a Darwinian sense, loses its meaning: how could a creature be adapted, either well or ill, for conditions it has never before encountered in its entire evolutionary history?" (Pg 90)
"One theory has it that the glaciation was produced by the early mosses that colonized the land and, in so doing, helped draw carbon dioxide out of the air. If this is the case, the first mass extinction of animals was caused by plants." (Pg 103)
"Just as it makes a big difference to your blood chemistry whether you take a month to go through a six-pack or an hour, it makes a big difference to marine chemistry whether carbon dioxide is added over the course of a million years or a hundred. To the oceans, as to the human liver, rate matters." (Pg 123)
"Reefs are organic paradoxes - obdurate, ship-destroying ramparts constructed by tiny gelatinous creatures. They are part animal, part vegetable, and part mineral, at once teeming with life and, at the same time, mostly dead." (Pg 130)
"The Great Barrier Reef extends, discontinuously, for more than fifteen hundred miles, and in some places it is five hundred feet thick. By the scale of reefs, the pyramids at Giza are kiddie blocks." (Pg 130)
"One of the striking characteristics of the Anthropocene is the hash it's made of the principles of geographic distribution. If high-ways, clear-cuts, and soybean plantations create islands where none before existed, global trade and global travel do the reverse: they deny even the remotest islands their remoteness. The process of remixing the world's flora and fauna, which began slowly, along the routes of early human migration, has, in recent decades, accelerated to the point where in some parts of the world, non-native plants now outnumber native ones." (Pg 198)
[Referencing Extinction of the Megafauna] "‘A very large mammal is living on the edge with respect to its reproductive rate,’" he told me. ‘The gestation period of an elephant, for example, is twenty-two months. Elephants don't have twins, and they don't start to reproduce until they're in their teens. So these are big, big constraints on how fast they can reproduce, even if everything is going really well. And the reason they're able to exist at all is that when animals get to a certain size they escape from predation, They're no longer vulnerable to being attacked. It's a terrible strategy on the reproductive side, but it's a great advantage on the predator-avoidance side. And that advantage completely disappears when people show up. Because no matter how big an animal is, we don't have a constraint on what we can eat.’" (Pg 233)
"Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did." (Pg 235)
"Neanderthals were extremely similar to modern humans; probably they were our very closest relatives. And yet clearly they were not humans. Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart- the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome." (Pg 240)
"Archaic humans like Homo-erectus ‘spread like many other mammals in the Old World,’ Pääbo told me. ‘They never came to Madagascar, never to Australia. Neither did Neanderthals. It's only fully modern humans who start this thing of venturing out on the ocean where you don't see land. Part of that is technology, of course; you have to have ships to do it. But there is also, I like to think or say, some madness there. You know? How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it's ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now we go to Mars. We never stop.’" (Pg 251)
"What I've been trying to do is trace an extinction event... the Anthropocene extinction, or, if you prefer the sound of it, the Sixth Extinction--and to place this event in the broader context of life's history. That history is neither strictly uniformitarian nor catastrophist; rather, it is a hybrid of the two. What this history reveals, in its ups and its downs, is that life is extremely resilient but not infinitely so. There have been very long uneventful stretches and very, very occasionally ‘revolutions on the surface of the earth.’" (Pg 265)
"To argue that the current extinction event could be averted if people just cared more and were willing to make more sacrifices is not wrong, exactly; still, it misses the point. It doesn't much matter whether people care or don't care. What matters is that people change the world. This capacity predates modernity, though, of course, modernity is its fullest expression. Indeed, this capacity is probably indistinguishable from the qualities that made us human to begin with: our restlessness, our creativity, our ability to cooperate to solve problems and complete complicated tasks. As soon as humans started using signs and symbols to represent the natural world, they pushed beyond the limits of that world. ‘In many ways human language is like the genetic code,’ the British paleontologist Michael Benton has written. ‘Information is stored and transmitted, with modifications, down the generations. Communication holds societies together and allows humans to escape evolution.’ Were people simply heedless or selfish or violent, there wouldn't be an Institute for Conservation Research, and there wouldn't be a need for one." (Pg 266)
"...having freed ourselves from the constraints of evolution, humans nevertheless remain dependent on the earth's biological and geochemical systems. By disrupting these systems--cutting down tropical rainforests, altering the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans--we're putting our own survival in danger." (Pg 267)