Analysis Of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction

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Bill McKibben in “The Environmental Issue from Hell” and Rachel Carson in “The Obligation to Endure” both believe that environmental issues are some of the most important issues facing mankind today. In “The Environmental Issue from Hell,” McKibben argues that Americans need to take a moral approach to solving the global warming problem. He is passionate about the problems associated with global warming, but he fails to provide concrete support. Carson argues in “The Obligation to Endure” that humans have ignorantly tampered with the delicate balance of nature through the use of pesticides. She presents a valid argument; however, it is weakened by her failure to cite her sources and her sole reliance on her own credibility as a biologist

The scale and pace of change is dramatic; for example, the extinction of species is occurring at around 100-fold pre-human rates4. The population sizes of vertebrate species have, on average, declined by half over the last 45 years5. More than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest has been felled since 20006. About

The most surprising aspect of this article was that humans today are said to be the cause of the sixth extinction. This was surprising to me because I did not know our planet has been impacted so much by our existence. Also, it surprised me because I have recently heard about how we were trying to fix our planet. The sixth extinction is horrible. Also, because we do not yet know the full extinct of our actions, the ramifications of our actions have yet to harm humankind. If we keep going we may not exist in 1,000

There have been five major mass extinction on earth triggered by a distinguishable event, but in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert writes of the narrative of the sixth extinction caused directly by human impact. The book identifies the effects of human activity on how, over humans history on earth, the natural world has been affected. Every environmental impact stems into three basic groups of global problems to nature: Pollution, Habitat loss and Invasive Species. Kolbert explains that each impact can be traced back to one source, human industrial development. With each impact various types of life in the natural world are affected. Deforestation, urbanization, and sea level rise contribute to habitat loss worldwide. When humans began to travel they also brought invasive species and disease along with them; as boats only became bigger more and more invasive species travel. This reverse engineering of the planet species, brings new species that don’t have any natural predators, thus having an easier time driving native species out to endangerment or extinction. The different outcomes that come from human pollution is separated throughout the book, but the idea remains constant; with the development of human culture, pollution has drastically impacted a vast extent of species habitats and their environment.

In the book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert there are a lot of examples that are going on in the world today and also examples of things that started when the first human being was around. This book talks about how we are in the sixth mass extinction, and that is caused by humans. Overall the book goes chapter by chapter and talks about the different mass extinctions there have been, and how they were caused, but also the book talks about different species that have gone extinct and the reasons why. For example the book talks about golden frogs that are located in Panama and how they were seen everywhere located in El Valle de Anton, but they suddenly started disappearing. They were disappearing because of a chytrid fungis cause by humans, when humans travel they were bring this fungis to different places, this ended up killing the frogs (Chapter 1, Kolbert). That is just one example, but throughout the book Kolbert talks about different extinctions like this and what caused them.

An example of an invasive species is “Cane Toad.” The cane toad was supposed to get rid of sugar cane pest, but then it came a pest. It only has a few predators outside from where it lives.But when animals try to eat it a discharge of poison goes on it’s skin and the predator gets poisoned and dies in a few minutes.Also it has been released into out of zoos on purpose.The cane toad used to live in South America and mainland middle of America, now it has been moved to Oceania and the Caribbean also North Australia.What people do is they eat toad and make soup of their eggs but this ends up killing them.

On a day to day basis most people take for granite the lives we get to live, along with putting to much value on the extra things such as materialistic items. Also, the majority of humans are too invested in their personal lives or with themselves that they do not look at the big picture of how what we are doing now will effect us later. As humans are routines in our lives can bring us harm, and within time a we may become the sixth extinction. I believe we threaten human existence as a species and it can eventually lead to destroying our own comfortable lives we have created for ourselves.

In regards to climate change and the fight against destructive tendencies, there is always two battles to be fought. On one hand, scientists must learn more about the Earth’s systems and other ecological mysteries. On the other hand, environmental preservation needs everyone on board, and so it is imperative to convince the global population of climate change’s validity. Greg Garrard’s addresses both of these issues in his article Conciliation and Consilience: Climate Change in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour. Garrard elaborates how Kingsolver masterfully balances the dynamics between science and public reception, although I disagree with several literary arguments he makes.

We are slowly killing our planet and our co-habitants at such a high rate that some say we are responsible for the sixth mass extinction. In the book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History author Elizabeth Kolbert an American journalist and professor at Williams College travels to different parts of the world to search for evidence that the sixth extinction is in fact happening now. In The Sixth Extinction Kolbert demonstrates the many ways in which humans are speeding up the loss of so many species. The question is, is it possible to stop or even slow down the loss of other species due to human actions? When we think about extinction we tend to think of cataclysmic events such as the meteor that struck Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago.

In a world that we, as humans, have begun to destroy and shape for the worse, there is still so much that we are oblivious to. From the illegal endangered animal trade to harmful CO2 and methane, Racing Extinction has revealed to both myself and society the constantly ticking clock that is Earth.

For example, when the first europeans set foot on this land, it began to cause many problems for the Natives, we wanted what they had, which for the most part was their land, but their were other things as well. However when we came here we also brought many diseases with us that the Native Americans had never encountered before. This resulted in the death of many Native Americans, although unlike “The City,” where everyone had died, only about “ninety percent” (Portero) of the Native Americans had died. This event or series of events supports the idea that humans have an invasive nature and also demonstrates how we are indifferent towards those

The non-fiction book that I decided to read was, “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” by Elizabeth Kolbert. What led me to picking this book was that it seemed the most interesting out of all of the non-fiction book selections. Since I already knew most of the reasons why animals went extinct, this book didn’t have an impact me. But when I previously learned about animals extinction, I was impacted because it let me know what happened to dead species species. Examples of this could include learning about the dinosaurs when I was younger or learning about climate change and hunting when I was in middle school.

One specific way that humans have begun the process of world extinction is through their incessant meddling with the environment. Not only do people destroy the environment with our wreckage and pollution, but the human race has introduced species into other ecosystems, causing massive repercussions. Referred to as invasive species, their introduction into a

Since before the industrial evolutions humans have been pumping green house gasses—carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons— into the atmosphere however, it wasn’t until recently that the amounts being produced are shoving the Earth into a sixth extinction. While the causes of this upcoming extinction are constantly debated on it has earned itself the name Holocene extinction. This name is derived from the theory that humans are the main contributors to this extinction. To investigate the cause Elizabeth Kolbert, and American journalist and professor at Williams College, took the world on a wild and saddening journey on the human contribution to this looming extinction in her novel, The Sixth Extinction; An Unnatural History. Not only does Kolbert’s book explain how humans have contributed to global warming and its effects on life on land but also ocean acidification and how life under the sea has changed over the years.