Essay Questions

How does Kolbert set her writing style apart in her book?

With the use of a literary style known as "defamiliarization," Kolbert writes the prologue to the book in a manner that makes the human race almost an alien, strange race. With the avoidance of the sense of "we human beings", Kolbert perfectly delves into this feeling of humans being of a strange species, one that seems more barbaric than the others around it. What with humans taking hold over everything around them on their planet, Kolbert successfully creates this eerie unfamiliarity surrounding the human race.

Her unique writing approach in the book makes the readers look ay humans as they are, colonizing and damaging everything on the planet.

What does Kolbert mean by the term "Anthropocene"?

"Anthropocene" simply means the "age of man". The word, coined by scientist Paul Crutzen, came into being with the evergrowing colonies of humans that inhabit the planet, effecting everything in and around the planet to an extreme level.

The "age of man" signifies the modern times where nothing is left unaltered by the humans on this planet. Hence, the "age of man" gave way to "Anthropocene" to signify the changing world at the hands of the human race.

What does Kolbert wish to imply when she mentions a new emerging equilibrium?

Though "new equilibrium" is something a future enthusiast would wish for, the kind that Kolbert mentions in the book, however, serves more like a horror sci-fi, with "giant rats" in Hawaii and "giant bunnies" in Australia.

Although the term itself came from scientist Charles Elton's theory of the world consisting of a perfectly balanced ecosystem, Kolbert brings to view how the balance being altered to extremes by the human race will be bringing a "new equilibrium" but it won't be all for good. Humans will most likely go extinct with the current pace of destruction being done to the ecosystem by humans. Hence, the "new equilibrium" will begin with the end of the species that gave way to it.