Fascinating read, so fascinating one almost forgets that what we are talking about is our impending doom. It’s hopeful in a fatalistic way, but fascinating in the detail and history of lessons learned and lessons ignored. I devoured this book in a day.

A short book that feels half finished. The worst penchants of the author are more grating here than in the last book, namely the incessant dropping of references to poems, music, literature. We get it, you write for the New Yorker. Some chapters read more like a travel blog than reporting on these projects. It speeds up toward the end, with Covid seemingly impacting the book's production schedule and it all just sort of ends on a sour note of defeatism.

Still, about half of the book is worthwhile and goes into some detail about the various climate management solutions that try to combat climate change, from carbon capture to solar radiation management to genetic hardening and manipulation. ( )

The author is a well-known environmental journalist and staff writer for the New Yorker. In this book, she travels to and interviews assorted scientists and entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, make the stratosphere more opaque, alkalinize the ocean, etc. in various desperate seeming, but perhaps ultimately necessary, ways. She doesn't pull any punches and you probably shouldn't read this if you’re feeling down. Her work on the book was apparently interrupted by the pandemic and it was shorter than I expected it to be. ( )

Some great looks at different ways humans have changed our planet/environment and what we're doing to change it back/mitigate the damage. I wished this had been longer, but the topics covered are covered sufficiently. Invasive species, disappearing land, carbon emissions, any change we make to our environment sets off a cascade of other changes we can't always predict. ( )

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