The Sixth Extinction and The Collapse of Western Civilization both have ominous sounding names – and true to expectations, they both foretell a somewhat dark future. They both delve into historical fact, base the majority of their claims on current events and research, and study the impact of humans in the environment. However, one of them is true. The other one isn’t.

            With the effects of climate change becoming more and more pronounced over the past decade, many authors have taken to writing about issues that deal with the environment in intersectional ways. Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, along with Naomi Oreskes and Erik Konway’s The Collapse of Western Civilization, are two such texts that approach the environment using different methods. Kolbert brings up multiple arguments in a factual and observational fashion; Oreskes and Konway present a heavily biased, one-sided argument that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction. Kolbert also focuses viewing the environmental problems through the perspective of environmentalists and scientists, while Oreskes and Konway view it from the eyes of corporations.

Both Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and The Collapse of Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conwayare both environmental texts about the impact of human life on the environment.

Elena Luedy

Professor Cohen

E-Sem

11/13/15

Scare or Comfort?

            Both The Collapse of Western Civilization and The Sixth Extinction warn their readers of what is to come if humans continue to taint the Earth as we have in the recent past and continue to today. Both authors mention past errors, however The Collapse of Western Civilization goes on to predict the future as a disaster, The Sixth Extinction offers a more hopeful outlook. Both books approach the readers with the hope that they will change their actions to reduce the ecological footprint they leave, however they do so in very different ways

November 13^th, 2015

People, including me, kill mosquitos because they are annoying. People, including me, have dogs because they are cute. Why is it the problem that some species become extinct? What is the real meaning of “the problem of sharing our earth with other creatures,”? (Kolbert, p.261)

I felt something odd while reading both “The Sixth Extinction” and “The Collapse of Western Civilization” and the following discussion in the class. I had no idea what to write in the essay because I haven’t realized the cause of the discomfort. Now, I would like to think about two points of view comparing the two books.

As I read “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert and “The Collapse of Civilization” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, I noticed that “The Sixth Extinction” had a more hopeful, optimistic tone than “The Collapse of Civilization” and furthermore, that the format contributed to the overall character of each book. Oreskes and Conway present a vision of Earth in regression, after it has suffered a host of injuries and crises. The depiction does not have the same sentimentality as Kolbert’s does, and because of this, “Collapse” has a more jarring and antiseptic sensibility to it.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural Historyis a nonfiction book by Elizabeth Kolbert illustrating how the Earth is in the midst of a modern, human-driven, sixth mass extinction.

Storytelling: What Constitutes a Character?

Both “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert and “The Collapse of Western Civilization” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway are texts about the destructive human impact on the environment (which humans are a part of, and although “environment” is deemed an archaic term by Oreskes and Conway, it is too difficult at this point to not separate “humans” and “environment”?). In this rough draft I will look at how the concept of “characters” in a novel apply to both of these texts.