Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Humans of gone to great effort to engineer nature to their designs. While this has often worked well in the short term, the long term is quite a different story. There are many cases of plants or animals that were introduced to help with a local issue, only to have caused even greater issues. People have also built many structures to combat one problem only to have another problem surface. The water control structures in Louisiana have helped prevent floods (when they work). Yet, the floods are what deposited sediment to keep the land.
After discussing the many unintended consequences of engineering the planet, the book pivots to climate change. We have spewed so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are impacting the climate. By some accounts, even if we stop all carbon emissions we are still on a bad path. That leaves reducing carbon in the air as a potential solution. How could that go wrong? The book first explores various carbon sequestering schemes in a positive light. Then puts on the cautious hat. Humanity does not have a good record looking at all the long-term consequences and impacts of the big projects. Alas, we are still continuing down the route. Will switching to electric cars really make a difference when the freeways themselves are impacting ecosystems? Could carbon captures just encourage more bad behavior? Or will it lead to a negative feedback loop in the other direction? Climate change does not have easy solutions.
There is a base way of extinction that happens as part of evolutionary systems. There are also extreme factors that contribute to mass-extinction events. Mankind is contributing to one of the newest mass events. Climate is changing so fast that habitats become inhabitable before species can adapt. Species can also fall prey to encroachment of habitats (via farming, cities, roadways or other modern development). The rapid movement of goods and people has also contributed to mass events. (White nose powder fungus contributed to a mass kill-off of bats. This may have spread rapidly by humans faster than bats could evolve defenses.) There are also cases of animals have evolved with minimal predators and thus have been simply killed off by humans for meat or sport.