THE FRAGILE EARTH

Diverse perspectives on the fate of the Earth.

Since the mid-1980s the New Yorker has offered incisive writing on climate change, with essays by Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert (the magazine’s “leading voice on the environment”), Eric Klinenberg, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and many others. In an informative, stimulating collection, Remnick and Finder have gathered 22 pieces that contribute, he hopes, “to a shared sense of urgency—and to a shared spirit of change.” Kolbert writes of her discovery “that large and sophisticated cultures have already been undone by climate change,” a disturbing precedent at a time when much damage to the environment cannot be undone. “Because of the slow pace of deep-ocean circulation and the long life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” she notes, “it is impossible to reverse the acidification that has already taken place. Nor is it possible to prevent still more from occurring.” On land and in the sea, mass extinctions are probable: “By the end of this century as many as half of earth’s species will be gone.” From an island off northwestern Antarctica, Fen Montaigne reports that of 900 breeding pairs of Adélie penguins recorded in 1974, only 11 adults and 7 chicks remain, a situation caused by “the effects of the rapid warming on the formation of sea ice, on the phytoplankton and Antarctic krill that depend on the sea ice,” and on the birds “that rely on the sea ice and the krill.” David Owen makes a case for the “environmental benignity” of densely populated cities. Although many people assume that rural areas are more environmentally sound, Owen reveals that “spreading people out increases the damage they do to the environment, while making the problems harder to see and to address.” As Michael Specter notes, assessing the environmental, social, and economic consequences of one’s choices—what to eat, where to live, how to travel—is complicated.

Top-shelf writers deliver urgent and compelling calls for dramatic change.