The New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert has spent more than ten years traveling around the world interviewing top scientists and people living near the north pole to get to the heart of the debate about global warming. Her ground breaking three part series “The Climate of Man” in The New Yorker won the 2005 National Magazine Award in the “Public Interest” category. Her book Field Notes From A Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change in 2006 asked what, if anything, could be done to save our planet.

Her latest book The Sixth Extinction says scientists around the world are monitoring developments that may lead to the most devastating extinction cataclysm since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. She reports on the work of scores of researchers including geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes and biologists who study species that are disappearing as the climate changes.

Elizabeth Kolbert talk at Google.

Ms Kolbert explains the science and the studies. She draws frightening parallels to ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics, and presents the personal tales of people affected most by our changing climate.