Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

　　普立茲獎得主伊麗莎白•科爾伯特繼《第六次滅絕：非自然史》後再推新作

　　在對自然予取予求這麼久、造成巨大的傷害後，我們還能夠挽救嗎？

 

　　如今，人類主宰地球，幾乎所有生物都受其掌控，人類的影響無處不在，為近代開闢了一個嶄新的時代：人類世。

 

　　我們究竟改變並創造了一個什麼樣的世界？伊麗莎白•科爾伯尋訪保育莫哈韋沙漠稀有魚類的生物學家，探訪研發新技術，將碳足跡變成石頭以延緩全球暖化的工程師，與試圖培育能在酷熱環境生存的「超級珊瑚」的澳洲學者，以及在平流層打造「遮陽毯」為地球降溫的物理學者，帶領我們檢視現今的世界。

 

　　所謂的文化，其實就是人類這一萬年來抗衡自然的結果。在《第六次滅絕：非自然史》中，科爾伯論述了人類對自然造成的災害，而在本書中，科爾伯再次將目光放在我們對自然的「干預」，探討若這種干預的力量，能以「改善」而非「破壞」的角度發揮作用，將可能成為拯救自然的希望。科爾伯以激勵人心、發人省思又幽默的文字，寫出我們現正面臨的挑戰。(文/博客來編譯)

 

　　The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?

 

　　That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.

 

　　In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.

 

　　One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.