Pushing the Limits

From 2013 to 2019, I facilitated an NSF Pushing the Limits book discussion group at a number of WLN Libraries. The focus of Pushing the Limits was on books about how societies have used science and technology throughout history to either advance human interests (and quality of life perhaps), or to strain the capacity of nature to withstand human stressors. Both can and do happen concurrently of course. And, there is evidence that we are, as a result, in the throes of a sixth great species extinction, this one being caused by humans. If that is hard to comprehend over just a human lifetime, then think of an extinction episode as spanning maybe hundreds or thousands of years, still only a moment in geological time. There are wonderful reads to be had in just considering the five known, d…