Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

by Elizabeth Kolbert

today people outweigh wild mammals by a ratio of more than eight to one. Add in the weight of our domesticated animals—mostly cows and pigs—and that ratio climbs to twenty-two to one.

“Drive out nature though you will with a pitchfork,” Horace wrote in 20 B.C., “yet she will always hurry back, and before you know it, will break through your perverse disdain in triumph.”