Basically, you invest into the pumping of atmospheric CO 2 (dissolved in water) deep underground into Iceland’s basalt rock, where it would mineralize into limestone. There is a Swiss start-up which sells you the good consciousness of offseting your own carbon footprint. Of course it is not enough to capture carbon, it needs to be stored somewhere. One of these, the US-based engineering professor Klaus Lackner, openly says that it would be wrong to ask humanity to change its ways, instead we can happily burn fossil fuels as usual, because restricting our lifestyles would be unfair, and compensate by capturing carbon using his amazing genius technology. Or carbon capture, another popular playground of male geniuses. Complete bollocks, Kolbert’s book even cautiously explains that it wouldn’t work long term even if it worked short-term (I personally doubt the latter also). The men in the book however think on much gander schemes, funded by many millions in public and investor money: like the global sun-dimming project with stratospheric particle aerosols for example, pushed by visionaries like Frank Keutsch, David Keith, Dan Schrag or Sir David King. But at least this is reasonable and potentially applicable science.

This may or may not work out to save the coral reefs and all the countless dependent marine species from extinction, maybe the scale of destruction is too big for any technical solution, maybe the wild corals out there are also evolving.

Many scientists fear the total demise of coral reefs in the very near future, labs like these try to speed up the evolution. Two female scientists ( Ruth Gates (deceased) and Madeleine van Oppen) are described whose labs work on breeding stress-resistant corals, with occasionally gene-engineered symbiotic algae, which would be seeded where the native corals died due to increased water temperatures and acidity, courtesy of the anthropogenic CO 2 pollution. I personally noticed the certain kind of gender difference and I feel it might be representative. Overall, it is an interesting book, even though the author is in my view a bit naive about the might and honesty of science, but then again so are all proper science journalists.

Elizabeth kolbert under a white sky