A review by bookwoods
Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert

3.0

 Under a White Sky is “a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems”. It explores desperate solutions to blocking invasive species from reaching new areas, to preserving animals whose natural habitats are facing dramatic changes, and to halting the most disastrous effects of climate change. Solutions, which are risky, controversial and more or less difficult. The experts Kolbert interviewed were, “without exception enthusiastic about their work. But, as a rule, this enthusiasm was tempered by doubt. The electric fish barriers, the concrete crevasse, the fake cavern, the synthetic clouds - these were presented to me less in a spirit of techno-optimism than what might be called techno-fatalism. They weren’t improvements on the originals; they were the best that anyone could come up with, given the circumstances”. 

The topics are certainly important and well chosen, but unlike in Kolbert's previous book, The Sixth Extinction, I didn’t find that they were particularly well explained. The narrative jumps from history to technology in odd ways, and I found there to be loads of unimportant detail in place of necessary basics. This meant that I sometimes felt  confused and bored at the same time, even though I’ve studied these things in university. But the overall message comes through strongly: we have messed up the world so throughoutly that in order to slow the cascading effects of our mistakes, we need to mess up the world in new, even more disruptive ways.