FEEDBACK

A leading climate scientist reflects on the origins and interconnectedness of life in this sweeping nonfiction book.

“Earth had a difficult start,” Golledge writes in the book’s opening lines as he describes a planet with superheated temperatures that was “continuously assaulted by extraterrestrial impacts.” Yet, at play across the eons of Earth’s early history was a network of interconnected changes that would give rise to life. Massive lightning storms that heated clay minerals to 1,000 degrees hotter than their melting point created “fossilized storm rocks” that, when eroded over time by acid rain, provided “a continual supply of the building blocks needed for molecules such as DNA.” In Golledge’s epic, poetic retelling of the history of life through a scientific lens, he consistently emphasizes the “unseen changes that bring about gradual improvements by refining, little by little, the way a system works.” These interlocking feedback systems are the invisible hands, as the author describes them, that shape life on Earth. The rise of humans as Earth’s dominant species also contributed to reshaping the planet. By the end of the last ice age, Golledge notes, “species after species went extinct” due to the overhunting of large prey. After the book’s imposing accounts of Earth’s early history, its middle chapters provide a longue durée account of human society from early civilizations through our “coming of age” via space exploration in the 20th century.

Golledge lucidly covers the ways climate and geological feedback systems have shaped cultures and societies. “Climatic switching that could, in a geologic instant, trigger sweeping cascades of environmental change” would be interpreted by their human victims as the “Wrath of the Gods,” and civilizations developed complex religious explanations. The rise of intricate religious systems exacerbated humanity’s tribalistic tendencies, with negative outcomes such as war and persecution that fostered us-versus-them mentalities. The book’s more philosophical concluding chapters ruminate on the essential web of life, comparing our consciousness, for instance, to an old-growth forest that is “wired for healing” and provides communal protection and identity that transcends a single, isolated tree. The book’s final chapter reflects on how the scientific lens of feedback offers insights on finding beauty and meaning in life, the arts, and literature. Indeed, the book’s emphasis on culture—and its ample interdisciplinary references to literature, art, religion, philosophy, and history—make the work stand out from other scientific primers. One cannot escape the fundamental questions of philosophy, existence, and meaning when engaging with the book’s scientific inquiry. A professor of glaciology at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, Golledge is a renowned climate scientist whose work on Antarctica has appeared in dozens of peer-reviewed scientific journals and has been referenced in the New York Times, National Geographic, and more. Through measured, nonpoliticized analysis, the book also offers a damning, if subtle, rebuke of climate change denialism in its emphasis on the ways in which humans contribute to environmental degradation. As groundbreaking as his research may be, Golledge best shows his talent by distilling complicated science into an accessible, engaging work that includes a 20-page glossary. The book’s almost lyrical narrative, comparable to the metaphysical lure of Carl Sagan’s compelling commentary on the cosmos, is accompanied by almost 400 research endnotes.

A scientific tour de force that tackles the ubiquitous questions of life and meaning.