The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is an incredible work of literature that provokes a lot of thought not just about the future of our planet, but about the everyday ways we use and abuse our planet.  He creates a picture of what our planet would look like if humans were to one day cease to live.  He begins his journey in the Bialowieza Puszcza, a forest between Poland and Belarus.  This half-million acre area of land is the last remaining area of old-growth lowlands in Europe today.  He paints a picture of the Oak trees covered in moss, the animals that live there, and the "air, thick and cool."  A theme common to the 19 chapters of this book is "the profusion of life owes much to all that is dead."  In the Puszcza, "almost of quarter of the organic mass above-ground is in assorted stages of decay-- more than 50 cubic yards of decomposing trunks and fallen branches on every acre, nourishing thousands of species of mushrooms, lichens, bark beetles, grubs, and microbes that are missing from the orderly, managed woodlands that pass as forest elsewhere."  He continues his thought experiment by detailing how life as we know it would begin to disappear and begin to turn back into the nature it once was.  Our wood-frame houses would be among the first structures to go.  His estimate is that they would last only 50-100 years of in-habitation, a mere sliver in the geologic time-scale his book covers.  The next chapter highlights how quickly our cities would begin to self-destruct.  The New York City Subway system would be one of the first human masterpieces to destruct.  "Every day, they must keep 13 million gallons of water from overpowering New York's subway tunnels."  Without humans to man the pumps and control that keep the subway running, expects think the whole infrastructure could fill with water within 36 hours of humans disappearing.  To gauge what a future without humans would look like, Weisman looks to our planets past.  He talks about how areas recovered from ice-ages and extinctions, and the beginning of humans in the Great African Rift Valley.  Keeping with his theme he notes that "one species' extinction being anothers evolution"  However this is not always the case when it is humans that cause the species extinction and not the process of natural selection.  The second part of The World Without us focuses on what we leave behind instead of what will disappear.  Most of what Weisman talks about are man-made materials, or natural materials altered by man.  Pollution in the oceans, many of them polymers, may last until microbes evolve enough so they can digest them.  Our "throw away society" is creating tons of garbage that will remain in our landfills and oceans for millions of years to come.  Rubber, petroleum, and Styrofoam are all human creation that will live well beyond the life-span of humans.  Fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are other chemicals that will not only effect the land they were spread on, but the surrounding water supply, as well as the plants and animals that try to re-populate the land we used to farm.  The third section of Weisman's book describes the fate of some of the worlds wonders, a world without war, how birds fare without humans, abandoned nuclear projects, and how we will fit into the geologic record.  The way he describes how the dams and locks that make the panama canal function, and how they will one day fail on a gigantic scale, really puts our place as humans in the big world into perspective.  Even our most advanced engineering achievements are no match for what nature has in store for a world without humans.  It is some of this achievements that have cause extinction, or near annihilation of some species that many people don't consider.  Weisman's detail of all the ways humans have contributed to killing birds was a real eye opener.  Birds die daily because of TV antennas, cell phone towers, windmills, electrical wires and towers, insecticides, DDT poisoning, windows, and automobiles.  All man made, all deadly for wildlife.  When humans are no longer around to erect more towers or drive their automobiles, it is likely birds populations will begin to rebound, that is if we haven't killed off their habitats by then.  Where do we go from here?  "All of us humans have myriad others species to thank.  Without them, we couldn't exist.  It's that simple, and we can't afford to ignore them, any more that I can afford to neglect my precious wife-- not the sweet mother Earth that births and holds us all.  Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be." --Alan Weisman