Elizabeth Kolbert (61 years old), journalist for The New Yorker magazine and writer, has traveled halfway around the world documenting the footprint that man has left in the farthest reaches of the planet. This is what his books reflect, such as The Sixth Extinction (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2015) or Under a White Sky. In them, he reinforces the scientific evidence of how the planet has entered the era of the Anthropocene, a term coined by the scientist Paul Crutzen to designate a new phase of geological history in which climate and biodiversity have been altered by greenhouse gases. and the irreversible damage caused by the excessive consumption of resources.

His reports reflect the efforts of those scientists who aspire to correct the most harmful effects inflicted by man on Earth. She says she tells “fables of the Anthropocene,” stories that highlight how attempts to rectify human error can no longer correct the path of an aimless or erratic planet. Geology does not allow going back.

She was a political information journalist when around the year 2000 she decided to focus on reporting on climate change, an issue that began to spark great controversy in her country. “It was in the George Bush era; So I decided to put all the scientific knowledge on the table, ”she recalls, convinced that it was a crucial moment, because at that time this issue was changing the rules of political and social debate.

“Increasingly, people are beginning to experience the effects of climate change in their daily lives: drought in the American West, fires in California, floods, or rising sea levels in coastal cities. , as for example in Virginia or Alabama…”, he highlights.

He has traveled to the ice caps of Greenland, the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, the Mojave Desert and the Amazon rainforest, interviewing dozens of scientists in search of answers. “We are transforming the climate; melting the world’s ice caps, transforming half of the ice-free land surface (about 70 million km2) and changing even the Earth’s axis”, she recounts. “There is not a single place where there is no evidence of human activity,” she sums up.

“People are causing more soil erosion today than all natural processes combined,” he explains. Humans overwhelmingly outnumber wildlife; if they add the mammalian specimens of livestock (cows, pigs…), the ratio is 24 humans for each wild mammal. When Japanese researchers descended to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, more than 10,000 meters deep, they found remains of plastic. The human trace is all over the planet.

“Many evidences collected by scientists show that the human impact on the planet rivals the great forces of nature”, comments the Anthropocene popularizer. “For all of geological history, the only way to add CO2 to the atmosphere was by volcano eruption; but now every year we emit 100 times more CO2 than a large erupting volcano”, to contribute to warming, she says. And not only that. “We have altered the biochemical cycles of nitrogen or phosphorus, which are influenced by people”, she explains to us before collecting the Biophilia award, given by the BBVA Foundation, in Madrid.

Kolbert discloses human unconsciousness in its destructive way, capable of causing an extinction of species and “doing it in a massive way, as if it didn’t realize it”. “What we are doing to the planet is beyond extraordinary; it defies all conception or description; It is unprecedented in the more than 3,000 million years of life history, ”he says.

When collecting his award, he referred to scientific research that may seem far-fetched, such as the one being tried in Australia to genetically modify a deadly invasive alien species, the cane toad, in order to obtain a creature free of the potent and poisonous toxin , and put an end to the havoc that native wildlife is causing.

“We don’t know if this idea will work; but it shows what the logic of the anthropocene is, which seeks to engender new and extreme forms of life, ”he reasons. The lesson is clear: moving animals from the continent “is not normal, it alters evolutionary history.”

No less paradoxical is the Orca project, which is being developed in Iceland, to capture CO2 from the atmosphere, as a remedy to absorb these gases and mitigate the warming caused by this gas. This technique eliminates and fixes CO2 in the soil at a rate of 4,000 tons per year. Little thing compared to the rate of world emissions; we would have to build 10 million versions of the project.

Other research is solar geoengineering, “an artificial version of a volcanic eruption,” also designed to mitigate warming. Specially designed planes would fly over the stratosphere and release sulfur dioxide or other material to reflect light and cool the earth. This would offset the warming effect produced by CO2. “Whether these approaches will work or not, whether we can intervene in time to counter climate change remains to be seen.” In the absence of reasonable ideas, we trust in technology: another way of playing God.