Elizabeth Kolbert Explores Promise and Problem of Environmental Intervention in ‘Under a White Sky’

Atmospheric warming, catastrophic sea level rise and mass extinction are just some of the monumental harms humans have inflicted on the planet. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Elizabeth Kolbert points out that while it might be prudent to scale back our polluting activities, we’ve become so numerous, and the damage so extensive, that we may need to do more. In her new book, “Under a White Sky,” Kolbert looks at some of the interventions — such as geoengineering and gene editing — that scientists say can reverse the environmental harms we’ve caused. We’ll talk to Kolbert about what she learned during her reporting and whether the answer to the problem of our control of nature is, in fact, more control.