Elizabeth Kolbert & Mark Hertsgaard: Under a White Sky

Thursday, February 11, 5pm-6:30pm Pacific time

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents an exceptional Zoom event:

ELIZABETH KOLBERT + MARK HERTSGAARD
Under a White Sky, The Nature of the Future

Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Sixth Extinction," returns to humanity's transformative impact on our 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 is said we now live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In "Under a White Sky" Kolbert takes a hard look at this new world we are creating. She examines how the sorts of intervention that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation.

"Under a White Sky" takes a clear-eyed look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world's rarest fish - one that lives in a tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave Desert. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop "super coral" that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space to cool the earth. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, "Under a White Sky" is a thoroughly original view of the challenges confronting us.

Mark Hertsgaard is an American journalist, author and environmental correspondent for The Nation magazine. Formerly a cultural reporter for the New Yorker, he has written seven books, including "Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing in the Age of Snowden, and "Hot: Living through the Next Fifty Years on Earth."

This event features two outstanding environmental authorities discussing the future of our planet.

$20 one admission, $35 admission + book.