Product Description
A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth
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In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists---who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths---Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
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 Thought-provoking facts, but taken with a grain of salt
One thing that surprises me about this book is some of the comments from other reviewers printed on the back: "This book is the very DNA of hope"--The Globe and Mail or "Extraordinarily foresighted ... beautiful and passionate." While I agree with the foresighted comment (it's a book whose very premise is about the future without us, so if it wasn't foresighted, I don't know what it would be) the others I find strange in their overwhelming sentiment that this book left them with a positive feeling.
I'm not going to say this book depressed me but...well, it's a bit depressing. Basically between the plastics, the radioactive metals and the CFCs, we seem pretty doomed if all the facts in this book are correct. I mean, I suppose we are doomed anyway since our sun will eventually expand and consume the planet, but our meddling seems to be shortening our lifespan as a species significantly. And even if that isn't taken into consideration, the multitude of ways we've permanently altered the landscape, through extinction and mining and carbon consumption and chemistry and genetic alterations is pretty harrowing when read all in one little tome, as this book presents it. And Weisman is willing to go back tens of thousands of years, to show how early man, through "controlled" burning and sophisticated hunting, has been shaping the land for millennia. I now realize that the "untouched" woods I hike through with my dogs are all "second-growth" forests--the new generation after the first one was, at some point, razed by humans for farming. Because pretty much every stitch of the earth has been razed at some point, if this book is correct.
However, I'm not always sure that everything Weisman presents is as horrible as it seems. The plastics and the radioactive fallout and the destruction of the ozone layer are pretty inarguable bad and scary--though even he admits that nature will likely one day evolve to thrive off of those pollutants. Birds and other animals, in fact, seem to exist around Chernobyl and thrive, despite the fact that the area is still considered inhabitable. But sometimes I felt like his description of humans altering the landscape (like through the controlled burns, hunting, agriculture, etc. ) took things a little too far. Mass extinction of many species in one area in a short time would be bad, but is there not an element of Darwinism to the creatures who have evolved to live in the world we changed? Are there not species that have a symbiotic relationship with us? Are we all really as bad as all that? Are we, too, not of this earth?
I think Weisman's ending sentiment is an important one, though it's difficult for me to imagine it ever having an impact until it's too late. Basically, our species has become so adept at surviving, that we are outliving our resources. However, unlike other animals that have done this in the past, only to be culled by horrible methods (starvation due to lack of resources, pandemics due to overcrowding, etc.), we have an advantage--we know that we're doing it and we have the ability to stop it ourselves very easily. Stop having so many children. Basically, Weisman's reported theory is that if all female humans on earth be restricted to one child, our population would go down to 19th century numbers within a century. It seems so incredibly extreme when said that way, but the improvements it would have on our lives would be incredible. We would still have all the advantages of modern life, only with far greater resources to support it. The problem, of course, is that we're still too obstinate in our instinct to procreate. People would never agree to self-limit their families, they have to basically be forced, and that presents a scary sci-fi dystopian future kind of vibe.
I say, read this book for the amazing facts and ideas presented. It will change the way you view everything--and I mean everything. From the hill on the horizon to the birds perching on your rooftop to the plastic water bottle you bring to the gym. But take it with a small grain of salt. It is doubtful that all is as bad as Weisman sometimes presents it, and statistics range so wildly in some of his reports that the two figures almost prompt different conclusions (like, for instance, the 4,000 to 100,000 human deaths resulting from Chernobyl--that's a bit of a difference!). Or his numbers concerning the fatalities of birds in North America every year. He claims we have 20 billion birds in North America, and yet when you add up the numbers he claims are killed by power lines, cars, house cats and windows every year, you realize something simply must be wrong, because otherwise we're killing off far more birds than could possibly reproduce to sustain that number. The fact is, there's no way one man got all these thousands of facts and figures exactly right, since not even the scientists studying the different subjects their entire lives necessarily have the facts right. And there is one small paradox that he failed to touch upon, which I find strange. The thing is, in a world without us, who will be there to appreciate all the beautiful things that flourish in our absence?
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 errata ( metrprof )
Errata:
Page 94: "Only 6,000 years ago, what is now the world's largest nonpolar desert was green savanna." This change is attributed to: "Our tilted axis straightened not even half a degree, but enough to nudge rain clouds around". No, the larger forcing was the change in the time of perihelion, the time of closest approach relative to the seasons. Perihelion in winter (as it is currently) weakens the northern hemisphere monsoons.
Page 141: "In turn, Sweden's shores were the receptacles for trash from England...the water seemed to obey the wind currents, which in these latitudes is easterly." Westerly.
Page 152: "Beneath it, the water describes lazy, clockwise whorls towards a depression at the center". Clockwise whorls around a mound (of approximately 1 m) at the center.
Page 162: "...humanity's total biomass -- which the eminent biologist E. O. Wislon estimates wouldn't fill the Grand Canyon--won't be missed for long." At 50 kg per human, the biomass of 6.5 billion humans occupies 1/3 of a cubic kilometer. A simple calculation. Perhaps there is confusion with an estimate of total biomass?
Page 267: "14-foot zirconium-alloy hollow rods stuffed end to end with uranium pellets that each contain as much power as a ton of coal". Energy, rather than power. And to be clear, emphasize that "each" refers to the pellet, not the rod. 1 gram of fissionable uranium is equiavalent to 1000 kg of coal.
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 Interesting "What If?" Look at the World ( njr503 )
A very well written and captivating look at Mother Earth's response to the disappearance of humans. I felt the author did a fantastic job at educating the reader on the devastating impact of important human discoveries that we take for granted today. It really will make you think twice about bringing home a plastic bag from the grocery store.
I also enjoyed the limitation of religious theories and beliefs as this book is dedicated to physical science.
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life will find a way - but we should too ( classic_o )
It's an easy speculation to say that without humans, the earth will restore, recleanse, rectify itself. Indeed, in his book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman repeatedly hints to the reader that the world doesn't need us as much as we need it. But Weisman goes beyond the obvious implication and details just how incredibly short-sighted we humans have been in just a brief time on this planet.
Weisman thoroughly stresses home the point that despite our tendencies toward toxicity, life will indeed find a way, whether it be millennia or billennia. There are a whole lot of ideas to take away from this thought experiment, for example the futility of our marvelous infrastructure once we are no longer around to monitor it; what will happen when wonders like the Chunnel, the Panama Canal, our volatile oil refineries and nuclear reactors/repositories as well as our subways have no one to flip the off switch or close the valve? How will the unmeasurable amount of polymers (plastic) dumped in our oceans annually begin to degrade, and what are the hopes of a hungry microbe that evolves the ability to feed on them?
Of the many thought provoking speculations and projections Weisman so meticulously researches and thoughtfully relates, he proposes the irony that the realization of our collective death may just perhaps contribute to the saving of ourselves. Interviewing the organizer of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and yes it it's a real organization, he postulates that if humans were really serious about curbing overpopulation, thereby eliminating juvenile delinquency among other issues, we might just have an epiphany:
" ...spiritual awakening would replace panic, because a dawning realization that as human life drew to a close, it was improving. There would be more than enough to eat, and resources would again be plentiful, including water. The seas would replenish. Because new housing wouldn't be necessary, so would forests and wetlands.
...Like retired business executives who suddenly find serenity by tending a garden, Knight envisions us spending our remaining time helping rid an increasingly natural world of unsightly and now useless clutter, in pursuit of which we'd once swapped something alive and lovely." (p.243)
As improbable it may be that people would go to such extremes or even somehow suddenly become extinct, Weisman's book is an ambitious and enlightening experiment that brings us closer to acknowledging our impact upon and responsibility to the world, while we're still with it.
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I agree with the other reviews
Very well written. Not as much detail in some places, but given the scope of the topic, that's forgiveable. It's interesting to note how little we do that will be permanent. Especially modern housing. Great reading!
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