Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert

scientists can only make recommendations; implementation is a political decision. You might hope that such a decision would be made equitably with respect to those alive today and to future generations, both human and nonhuman. But let’s just say the record here isn’t strong. (See, for example, climate change.)

in this book, I’ve tried to be honest about the scale of the challenge and about the difficulty of arresting processes of global change once they’ve been set in motion.

One last point: neither optimism nor pessimism alters the fact that we live in an extraordinary moment. The choices that we’ll make—that we are making right now, without necessarily being aware of them—will determine the future of life for our children and their children and all the other species on earth for generations to come. This is the situation we’re in, and there’s no avoiding it, because, in the end, this marvelous, fragile planet is all we’ve got.

Very "Precipice"