Many scientists believe humans are triggering the next mass extinction on the planet. Picture credit: Ashley MacKinnon MacKinnon - CC BY 2.0
In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for the New Yorker, argues that we are in the midst of global mass extinction. If that’s not chilling enough, she also shows that we, humans, are largely the cause.
Kolbert solidified herself as a prominent environmental writer in 2006, with her global warming tale Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Following its predecessor’s tracks, The Sixth Extinction reports on ecosystems and species threatened by climate change, human activities and habitat-loss. Many scientists now believe we’re living in the Anthropocene – the geological epoch of man-made havoc, and Kolbert shows how this dramatically alters everything around us.
Kolbert possesses the rare gift of addressing complicated scientific issues in a relatable, entertaining way. Blending personal accounts from sites like the Panamanian rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon jungle with biological history and contemporary science, she paints a vivid picture of what we stand to lose. Calling for action, in the same way works like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1961) and Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature (1989) did, The Sixth Extinction earned Kolbert the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction and is ranked number one on the Guardian’s ‘top 100 non-fiction books of all time’.
Throughout history, there have been five mass extinction events: The Ordovician-Silurian, the Late Devonian, the Permian, the Triassic-Jurassic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary (the one with the dinosaurs). While the causes vary from volcanic eruptions to gigantic asteroids, extreme shifts in climate played a part in all. Today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is reportedly at the highest it’s been for thousands, perhaps millions of years, and it’s estimated that we could be losing species between 10,000 and 100,000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. The sixth mass extinction may very well be underway, only this time, we are the asteroid of doom.
The sixth mass extinction may very well be underway, only this time, we are the asteroid of doom
But it’s not only through the fossil fuel burning, plastic dumping, rainforest logging and wildlife poaching in recent years that we have shattered the habitats of those with which we share this planet. Historical evidence points to the dreadful fact that extinct species like the mastodon, mammoth and other megafauna, as well as the Neanderthals, all perished somewhat parallel to humans’ arrival in their habitats. Humans have proved, both biologically and historically, to be the greatest living destroyer there is.
Through her investigative and science-dense style of writing, Kolbert remains unbiased. She deliberately avoids any suggestive tone of language or political favouritism, and sticks to providing the facts - leaving it to the reader what to do. Her way of humanising palaeontologists, marine biologists and other experts make complicated matters more approachable for the reader. By breaking down biological jargon and providing colourful descriptions of the issues she’s presented, Kolbert brings the scientific community down to an unusually relatable, everyday platform.
Kolbert brings the scientific community down to an unusually relatable, everyday platform
We are told the bloody story of the Great Auk – a penguin-like flightless bird that used to reside in vast numbers on rocky islands in the waters outside Canada, Iceland and Scandinavia. An easy prey for man, it was hunted in the thousands on a daily basis for its meat and feathers and driven to extinction in the mid 19th century.
We are told how a lethal fungus is wiping out amphibians across the globe, to the point where close to no frog or dart species are left unthreatened. Another deadly fungus is killing off bats in America, also in the millions. Both of these killers have travelled swiftly across continents in recent years – a phenomenon where man, again, is the main suspect.
Surprisingly, extinction is a relatively new concept in natural sciences. Up until the late-eighteenth century, it wasn’t believed that entire species could have existed before, but now didn’t. Then, in 1796, George Cuvier discovered that what was previously thought to be the bones of an elephant, actually belonged to a mastodon - an ancient mammoth-like creature that no longer walked the earth. The French naturalist concluded that a catastrophic, short-lived event must have taken place, as more bones from different megafauna were discovered. This revolutionised evolutionary thinking and was later coined under the term ‘catastrophism’.
Cuvier was scrutinised and criticised - even Darwin questioned how such events, where entire species could go extinct in a relatively short amount of time, were possible. It contradicted common sense. This is a great reminder of how limited our knowledge of the planet’s history is, and how recent world-altering discoveries have been made.
In chapters 6 and 7, Kolbert compellingly writes about how around a third of all the carbon dioxide we dump in the atmosphere is consumed by the oceans. That, in result, leads to warmer ocean temperatures, which in turn leads to ocean acidification and coral bleaching. The result is a mass dying of coral reefs and the thousands of species relying on them. In 2016, two years after The Sixth Extinction was published, the Great Barrier Reef – the largest coral reef system in the world - was declared dead.
Kolbert crams a lot into just 319 pages. She revisits history, predicts the future and documents the present. But it’s admirably executed. Summarised, the somewhat famous incident of the brown tree snake’s intrusion of Guam in the 1940s, described by Kolbert in chapter 10, is a fitting analogy on what The Sixth Extinction initially says:
The long, brown, New Guinean-native found its way to Guam through human transport and started spreading voraciously. The island’s fauna was unprepared for the predator: In just a few years, the snake ate its way through over 90% of all the island’s native birds and two-thirds of its mammals. There was nothing the local community could do.
Quoted by Kolbert, author David Quammen points out that “the snake is doing exactly what homo sapiens have been doing all over the planet: succeeded extravagantly on the expense of other species”. If we don’t seize to do so, a frightening future looms.
You can buy the hardcover version of The Sixth Extinction on Amazon for £16.
Jonas Henmo