Elizabeth Kolbert – On the Perils and Promise of Geoengineering

In the 7th episode of Planet A’s second season, Dan Jørgensen talks with the journalist and author, Elizabeth Kolbert. 

Kolbert first achieved international prominence when her bestselling book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 and the Guardian named it the best non-fiction book of all time. 

She has worked for the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine since the early 1980’s. A recurring theme in her writing has been the consequences of environmental degradation.

On the podcast, Kolbert speaks about the prospect for a mass extinction on Earth, due to the climate and biodiversity crises - and the large-scale interventions that could help turn the tide. 

Kolbert has explored the issue in her latest book “Under a White Sky: The Nature of The Future”, which was published just a few months ago. 

She studied “solar geoengineering”, the idea of injecting sulfate into the stratosphere to limit how much direct sunlight that would hit the Earth. 

This would emulate a volcanic eruption and could lower the global temperature. 

However, it can also lead to new problems and raises grave ethical questions. For instance, it would make the sky appear whiter.

The book makes for gloomy reading and Kolbert is certainly no optimist when it comes to the future of the planet. 

Nonetheless, she finds some hope in community driven approaches to the climate crisis and is very fond of the Danish Island of Samsø that has been pioneering the green transition through a bottom-up-approach.