There’s the “do nothing” approach. Simply put, it's the archaic idea of leaving the environment alone in hopes that nature will fix itself.
Then there are a multitude of efforts to stall climate change. But then there are concepts, such as “solar geoengineering,” and the controversial notion of deliberately reflecting sunlight back into space, resulting in a so-called “white sky.”
It’s all chronicled in the new must-read, “Under a White Sky” byPulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert.
“This (is) a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems,” she writes.
Just before her much-anticipated appearance at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, Kolbert visits with Morning Edition host George Prentice to talk about white skies, the recent Supreme Court ruling on the EPA’s efforts to curb emissions, and that ruling’s stunning connection to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Read the full transcript below:
GEORGE PRENTICE: It is Morning Edition on Boise State Public Radio News. Good morning. I'm George Prentice. In her new book, “Under a White Sky,” author Elizabeth Kolbert reminds us of foretelling from no less than Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Stuart Brand and Franz Kafka. And then we are transported to Devils Hole, Nevada, the Great Barrier Reef, the Mississippi Delta, the Chicago River and southern Iceland, where when CO2 is grabbed from the atmosphere and turned into a gas, it is injected deep into the crust of the earth where it turns to rock. The book is “Under a White Sky. The Nature of the Future.” And just before her appearance at the Sun Valley Writers Conference, we are honored to have Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Kolbert spend a few minutes with us. Elizabeth Kolbert, good morning.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: Good morning.
PRENTICE: I must tell you that most environmental reporting leaves me frustrated, angry… usually both; but in your book, primarily because of its sense of place, and then introducing us to some rather extraordinary people, my primary reaction was curiosity and an increasing desire to talk to more people about what you introduce us to.
KOLBERT: Well, I'm really gratified to hear about your response. I think that in general, I was trying to avoid some of the pitfalls that environmental journalism tends to fall into… precisely because the issues are so big and so overwhelming. So, I tried to tell some stories that were, I hope, just really interesting on their own that raise a lot of interesting questions, hard questions. I think they are very difficult questions. And the book doesn't pretend really to answer those questions. But I hope it does get people thinking and asking more questions.
PRENTICE: For our listeners, could you, at least in layperson's terms, tell them about what this jaw dropping proposal of “white sky” is?
KOLBERT: Yeah, well, what it would be referred to in the scientific literature, I guess, would be solar geoengineering, or it's sometimes called solar radiation management. And here the idea is when you get a major volcanic eruption, you get a temporary global cooling because a lot of reflective material is sort of spewed into the stratosphere. So, people have had the idea really for quite a long time that we could try to mimic volcanoes and in that way try to counteract some, at least of the warming that we are also producing by spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So, this is a very, very, very controversial notion. It's really just a notion at this point. But it's already generated fierce opposition and it has many potential side effects. And one of them would be to actually change the color of the sky, would be putting up this reflective material in the stratosphere, and that would be reflecting sunlight back to space. And that would actually sort of change the hue of the sky. So that's where the title of the book comes from.
PRENTICE: And one of those proposals is to drop… well, what would be dropped by huge planes?
KOLBERT: Well, that's sort of up for grabs, to be honest. What volcanoes do is they spew out a lot of sulfur dioxide, and that forms these little sticky droplets, basically, that are very reflective. And that's why you get these beautiful sunsets after a major eruption. And you get, as I said, this temporary global cooling. But there are other potential people are talking about calcium carbonate, which is basically limestone, ground up limestone. One of the scientists I spoke to says, well, maybe tiny little ground of diamonds or something that we should be thinking about. Anything that would be very reflective and would remain aloft for a certain amount of time could be considered. But these are research questions that, as I say, some people say we should be pursuing, and some people say we shouldn't even be pursuing.
PRENTICE: Has that conversation… or proposal advanced?
KOLBERT: Well, I would not say it's advanced very far. I think there is increasing sort of conversation about it in in certain academic and maybe even diplomatic circles. But in terms of actual on the ground or in the air, I suppose I should say experimentation, the first sort of tiny little experiment was actually supposed to take place last summer in Sweden, but there was so much opposition to it on the ground that it did not take place and it's not going to take place this summer as far as I know either. So, it's a little bit in limbo right now.
PRENTICE: With your permission, I am going to ask you to read a passage from your book from one of the many pages that I've dogeared. Let's see…page 97, about halfway down. Could I ask you to read, beginning with the words, “If a feeble man can do so much…” Could you read some for us?
KOLBERT: Sure. So we're beginning with a quote from Charles Darwin:
“If feeble man can do so much by his powers of artificial selection,” there was, Darwin speculated, no limit to the amount of change that could be affected by, “nature's power selection.” A century and a half after on the origin of Species, Darwin's argument by analogy is still compelling, though every year it gets harder to keep the term straight. Feeble man is changing the climate, and this is exerting strong, selective pressure. So are myriad other forms of global change deforestation, habitat fragmentation, introduce predators, introduced pathogens, light pollution, air pollution, water pollution, herbicides, insecticides and rodenticides. What do you call natural selection after the end of nature?
PRENTICE: Wow. And, well, none of our options…none of them are natural. They're anything but. And your book is about people. In your words,” People trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems.”Wow.
KOLBERT: Yeah, I'll leave it at that.
PRENTICE: I can't let you go before we talk for just a moment about the recent Supreme Court ruling that hamstrings the EPA and efforts to curb carbon emissions. I found an article of yours you wrote for The New Yorker. It was in January. And this is rather stunning. You wrote then that in this particular Supreme Court case - West Virginia v. EPA - one of the briefs filed with the court was from… and I'm still reeling over this, John Eastman. And for anyone paying any attention to the January 6th hearings, Eastman was one of the architects of the plot to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election.
KOLBERT: Yeah. It's extremely disturbing. And I think people who have looked at the connections between some of these groups that are financing attacks on various regulations and also forwarding a lot of the legal theories that that the present Supreme Court has sort of taken up. You know, when you when you look at all of the financing connections and in this case, a very, very suggestive personal connection. It raises some pretty troubling questions about really who's in charge here.
PRENTICE: Can I assume that you were not surprised by the ruling?
KOLBERT: I was not surprised by the ruling. No, I mean, anyone who has any I mean, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a Supreme Court watcher particularly. But I think anyone who has watched the court and heard their arguments, especially when they struck down the Biden administration's mandates on COVID vaccines for certain large employers, they invoked certain ideas, certain legal theories that really make it difficult for federal regulatory agencies to protect the public health. And I think that's very I think a lot of that has been subsumed under a lot of the attention being paid to the Dobbs case in overturning Roe v Wade. But the court cases and there will be more to come that have really increasingly constrained agencies from protecting the environment and public health, I think will have just as serious ramifications, unfortunately.
PRENTICE: Can I ask where your journalism is taking you next?
KOLBERT: Well, I kind of wish I knew. Yeah, I'm hoping some more interesting spots.
PRENTICE: Well, that said, the winds of change are growing more intense. So, it could be in any direction.
KOLBERT: Yeah, there's certainly no shortage of news on the climate change front, sadly.
PRENTICE: Have you had the opportunity to visit Sun Valley or Idaho before?
KOLBERT: I have been to Idaho before, but I have never been to Sun Valley. I’m looking forward to it.
PRENTICE: Sun Valley…is about as perfect a place…well, let's say in North America, as you will find in in mid-July. And the Sun Valley Writer's Conference gets underway this Saturday, it continues through Monday, July 18th. Elizabeth Kolbert's new book is a must-read: “Under a White Sky.” And for now, Elizabeth Kolbert, travel safe. And thank you so very much.
KOLBERT: Oh, thanks for having me.
Find reporter George Prentice on Twitter @georgepren
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