The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History | Elizabeth Kolbert | Talks at Google

Please note, the slides are not included in this video.

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

In "The Sixth Extinction", Pulitzer Prize winner and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

[KristopherWilliams_tahmson]

Google, will you tell your film crews that it is indeed okay to show the graphs that are ever so important for the topic at hand?

[PassportGods]

It'd be great to see the slides that she's constantly pointing at! :)

[benwright]

Thanks for putting this on Google! It's great to see a major corporation contributing in some way to this catastrophe we've found ourselves in.

[michelleshi]

I met someone who didn’t believe in climate change yesterday. I think I lost half of my brain cells trying to reason with them.

[PassportGods]

Why on earth were the slides not shown?! I was so looking forward to this talk :(

[frededison]

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." The words come from the 'Bhagavad Gita' and were said about the first atomic bomb detonation, but these words can as easily apply to the effects humans and their activities are eliciting upon the Earth.

[jengal]

THIS IS WHAT A REAL JOURNALIST LOOKS LIKE.

[docf.n.t.]

What the hell was wrong with the camera person ? We miss most of the video because the camera never focuses on anything but her ! I gave up watching after 8:35 because of this. Sad, I would have watched it, but it could have had the same impact if it were done as a radio show !

[michaelzonta]

Thanks for showing us the photos the speaker is referring to. Helps a lot.

[theforestero]

The theme for the book is very interesting and meaningful...

[bonpearl]

There is literally a TON of little things, as with big things, we all could do - IF given the tools - to make great strides in living in harmony with the earth. But economically rich people have to be willing to give up their egos and some of their riches in order to MAKE that happen.
For example, fashion - the clothing industry. That industry alone has a vast impact on the earth, while the truth is, here in North America everyone has FAR too many clothes most of which are not even worn. Clothes that sit in dressers and closets and end up in good will stores or in the garbage. It is WASTEFUL and TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. And that is just ONE example of thousands of examples. There are plenty of solutions that people do not seem to want to see and/or thus employ. Hence, it is little wonder some folks are suspect of the whole idea concerning climate change.

[maggydasmauschen]

i like how they never show any of the slides

[glenmacdonald]

3:00 Apparently crows are generally monogamous, perhaps he's in love with the 'handler' and doesn't want anyone else?

[theforestero]

39:33 Rats are everywhere humans are, and so are many ''rat people'' so, if humans go extinct, the cockroaches and rats will still b e around, feeding on the remains of the day.

[ronlamanna]

I can not see how they could possibly know that there have been 5 previous extinctions..carbon would not be the biggest problem a volcano eruption would spew out more carbon than all human industrial production in a lifetime...now Methane would be more of a problem...
Elizabeth Kolbert (born 1961) is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her 2006 book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and as an observer and commentator on environmentalism for The New Yorker magazine.She received the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for her book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.

[SylvanTuck]

On one of her PBS interviews she talked about releasing particles into the atmosphere that would reflect the sun-rays back upward away from the earth to cut down on global warming. This would be done with airplanes. My, my, my isn't this exactly what everyone has been calling Chem-trails ... Of course they made fun of them and called those that believed in it ... Conspiracy theorists. This woman is talking science.

[marksherman]

11:55 Prof Kolbert drinks from her disposable cup.  Slightly breaking my heart.  Little actions matter.

[jansoderlund]

Google couldn't afford a camera for her slides?

[NoName-fnt]

Slides are not necessary as her narrative and your own imagination should be enough to produce your own image of what is on the screen behind her. Elizabeth also mentions titles to many of the slides which can easily be found elsewhere online.

[theforestero]

More books need to be digitized or kindle-ized, and made for non- Fossil fuel economy products, text read-out devices;of the digital-internet based type.