The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

 The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert




Read: June 2021

This book is about the enormous changes human beings are bringing upon the world we cohabit with other species, and contrasts with the other five major extinctions which happened in the past. The previous annihilations were mostly gradual, and also sudden (remember dinosaurs?). The current extinction phase comes under the sudden category, and is different from the previous ones because it is man made and that it so rapid. A new period, called Anthropocene, had to be coined to put to name to what is going on.

The author visited various research sites in the world, including islands off Australia & Italy, rainforest in Brazil, bat caves in US, bird nesting sites in Iceland, et al to write quite an authentic piece of combinatorial research.

Some of the facts that hit you in the face: amphibians are going extinct at 45 thousand times their normal rate; an average American pumps in 7 pounds of carbon the ocean each day which will make coral reefs extinct by 2050; plants and animals have to migrate 30 feet a day poleward each day to keep pace with the temperature change; one species is being lost every 100 minutes, and so on.

Some interesting facts: the discovery of the meteor hit making dinosaurs extinct was not made by some paleontologist or a biologist but a Nobel prize winning physicist and his geologist son duo from Berkeley; that Jurassic Park concept of reviving dinosaurs is a fantasy with current science; that all humans currently other than Africans carry up to 4% of Neanderthal genes in them; millions of years later when humans are gone, all the civilization, its great monuments, all of it would be crunched into a layer of soil not thicker than a cigarette paper.

The conclusion of this book is that humans may be hurtling towards their self-created destruction. This won’t be the first extinction, but certainly, the first of its kind.

Engaging read. Recommended for kids in high school.


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