Breakingviews - Review: The human response to a man-made disaster

That’s the central question Elizabeth Kolbert tackles in “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future”. “The Sixth Extinction”, which appeared in 2014, chronicled the man-made annihilation of a large chunk of the planet’s animal and plant species. Kolbert visits a team near Australia’s Great Barrier Reef breeding hardier varieties of coral which might be able to survive in warming oceans. Kolbert visits a lab near Melbourne where researchers have genetically engineered a less dangerous version of the cane toad, which has hopped uncontrollably across Australia since it was introduced in the 1930s. Kolbert visits a facility in Iceland which combines carbon dioxide with water and injects it deep underground, where it reacts with volcanic rock.