Under a White Sky

Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction, examines a paradox of the Anthropocene: the kinds of intervention that have put the planet at risk are increasingly seen as the only way to save it. She meets engineers in Iceland turning carbon emissions into stone, biologists guarding the world's rarest fish in one tiny pool in the Mojave, Australian researchers developing a super coral for a warmer planet, and physicists weighing the release of tiny diamonds into the stratosphere. The title refers to solar geoengineering, which would reflect sunlight away from the earth. Kolbert shows that solving one problem with technology can create others, while granting such technologies a possible role.

Bill Gates, in his 2021 summer reading picks, called it the most direct look at humanity versus nature among the books he chose.