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Tag: Elizabeth Kolbert

Review: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014, edited by Deborah Blum

Note: I received an advance ebook copy from the publisher for review consideration, through Netgalley. I’ve read this collection for the past three years now, and every time, the editor has been careful to include science writing on a range of topics. If Deborah Blum’s collection is perhaps a trifle heavy on What Our Hubris Hath Wrought on the planet and its occupants (and a trifle light on SPACE and the things that happen IN SPACE), it’s very little surprise. At this point, the consensus is that global warming is at this point irreversible or close to it and we…

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Someone has to decide which animals go extinct

Have y’all ever thought about that before? I had not! But I was reading the 2013 Best American Science and Nature Writing, edited this year by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and an essay by Michelle Nijhuis from Scientific American blew my mind out of the back of my skull. Someone has to decide which animals go extinct! Even if that is not the exact decision that gets made, it’s effectively still true: When resources are finite (and they always are), choosing to save one species means you have chosen not to save another one. If you aren’t in denial about this truth,…

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