On The Sixth Extinction An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert published in two thousand fifteen: Three things stuck out to me: (1) extinctions happen, (2) mass extinctions rarely happen, and (3) we may be in a sixth mass extinction event caused by us, humans.
Elizabeth Kolbert is a writer who thought hanging out with a bunch of scientists and learning about how humans are messing up the planet would be a good use of her time. And I think it was because she wrote a good book. I really liked how her chapter titles describe their content in a way that you understand only after you have worked through the chapter.
One thing that really stuck out to me from this book is something called the species-area relationship (SAR). While there appear to be a lot of caveats to the formula, what I took away from it was the basic idea that species need space to survive. Take away space and more species go extinct. Add space and over long periods of time more species evolve.
Obviously it’s more complicated than that because, what isn’t? But the takeaway is this: everything seems to have a beginning and an ending. Organisms die, species go extinct, and life is short enough as it is. Why would we want to make it any shorter?
So, good book – pick it up if you want to learn how to make life last a little longer.
Deliberating Truth 