The Sixth Extinction By Elizabeth Kolbert: Chapter Analysis

On a warm summer day, it's never uncommon in my household that we are taking a drive out to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. When the flowers are in full bloom creating a bouquet of colors and there is a slight breeze to shake the trees it makes me think of how lucky my family and I are to live so close to the gardens. During my visits to the garden I always make sure to stop by the Japanese gardens to experience the wonder of the gardens. I consider the wonder of the garden to be the towering weeping willow that overlooks the lake. Whenever I see it swaying in the warm wind with the smell of sweet dew I get taken to a different place where I find myself more connected with nature and more in tune to my surroundings. These wonders are rare but

This novel focusses on many things relating to our earth but touches deeply on one of our rare wonders in the world, the Great Barrier Reef and how it is being threatened by ocean acidification. In chapter seven, Kolbert is writing about her experiences on a science outpost and is talking about various studies that led up to the discovery that ocean PH levels change how the coral grows. She writes about the results of a study that took place in Arizona: "Coral few fastest at an aragonite saturation state of five, slower at four, and still lower at three. At a level of two, they basically quit building" (Kolbert). What this means is that as the PH levels in the water drop because of CO2 levels, the rate at which the reefs will grow is dramatically decreased to the point that they will stop all together. This becomes a much larger problem when Kolbert talks about the reefs on our world. She states: "This is because out in the real world, reefs are constantly being eaten away at by fish and sea urchins and burrowing worms" (Kolbert). What Kolbert means by this is as the PH levels in our oceans drop, the rate at which reefs grow will decrease. With the decrease in production rates, the reefs will not be able to keep up with the fish and other organisms that break them. World wonders will slowly begin to erode away to extinction and

In the poem "The World is Too Much With Us" by William Wordsworth, William talks about how humans have wasted nature and are too focussed on money to realize that everything is connected and we are disgracing our planet. On line 2 William writes: "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" (Wordsworth). The phrase "lay waste" denotatively means to destroy something and in this case it means that we destroy our earth. Connotatively, "lay waste" means to pervert something to the point of changing not only the object itself but the objects connected to it without having any second thoughts about doing so. What William is saying is due to our spending habits, we are blinded by money and greed to the point that we can't see what we already have. "Getting and spending" in our world today can be compared to cutting our tress down for money and "Lay waste" can be compared to how recklessly we destroy our forests without considering the fact that everything in nature is