In her new book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert describes traveling the world to document the mass extinction of species that seems to be unfolding before our eyes. There have been five comparable crises in the history of life on Earth, she writes, but this one is different: It’s being caused by us.
Her subject this time is what she sees as the tragedy at the very core of human nature: “The qualities that made us human to begin with: our restlessness, our creativity, our ability to cooperate to solve problems and complete complicated tasks,” Kolbert writes, are leading us to change the world so rapidly and profoundly that other species can’t keep up. National Geographic reached Kolbert in New York to talk about it.
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