When I read a book about the environment, I usually come away depressed. Sure, there are some uplifting books out there, but most environmental books concern coming or current catastrophes. Global warming, extinction, horrific pollution — these are common topics, and they make for dismal reading. Though Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us addresses all of these familiar issues and more, upon completing it, I felt the strangest sense of hope. It was one of the most interesting and oddly affecting non-fiction books I have ever read.
The work’s controlling idea is a simple one, but with far-reaching implications: What would happen to the world (the natural and man-made realms) if all of humanity just disappeared? What would become of our cities and farms, of the forests and oceans? Drawing upon expert opinions, history and his own imaginative powers, Weisman envisions an earth devoid of human beings, but not of our material legacy. He charts the hypothetical decay of our entire infrastructure and imagines the return of true wilderness where the human race once dwelled. The results of this extended thought experiment are both humbling and heartening.
The book is impressive both for its vast scope and its crisp style. Weisman is just as adept at describing staggering feats of human endeavor as he is at explaining the complex properties of micro-organisms. His visits to locations as diverse as the DMZ of the Korean Peninsula, a strip-mining operation in North Carolina, and the Aberdares moors of Kenya are uniformly interesting and well-written.
Indeed, the great strength of The World Without Us is its many vivid descriptions of things alternately appalling and awe-inspiring. Never before have I been given such a clear idea of the scope, the scale of human industry. As I came to learn, humanity has embarked upon projects that are truly massive in size and conception. In reading the chapter on the environmental legacy of petroleum extraction and the immense industrial complex in Houston, I could not help but be amazed at the audacity, the ingenuity, the foolishness of the human race. Did you know that enormous underwater salt domes are hollowed out and used to store explosive gases until they can be turned into plastic? I didn’t. In every chapter, I was confronted with a fact that significantly affected my understanding of the natural world and humanity’s role in shaping it.
Nature has her way, once humans leave.
The overarching theme of the book, if it can be said to have one, is the resilience and fluidity of the natural world. No matter what humans throw at it, nature endures. Currently, some of the most ecologically vibrant places on the earth are decrepit industrial wastelands. Chernobyl, the site of an infamous 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine, is now a teeming wilderness. Less than a year after humans fled, the birds returned to settle in one of the most dangerous and desolate places on the earth. Weisman’s description is profound:
“To watch barn swallows zip naked around the carcass of the hot reactor is discombobulating, especially when you are swaddled in layers of wool and hooded canvas coveralls to block alpha particles, with a surgical cap and mask to keep plutonium dust from your hair and lungs. You want them to fly away, fast and far. At the same time it’s mesmerizing that they’re here. It all seems so normal, as if apocalypse has turned out to be not so bad after all. The worst happens, and life still goes on.”
The imagined speedy demise of our infrastructure underscores just how unnatural our lives are. If humans really were to disappear, we learn, nature would shrug off our cheap material legacy almost immediately. In a couple of days, New York’s subway system would flood with water, and in a couple of decades, a nascent river would flow through Manhattan. Our houses would disappear in one hundred years, while some would rot in as little as ten. The plants and animals driven off by human development would very quickly reclaim their lost territory and settle among the ruins of our civilization. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all.
Unfortunately, Weisman tells us, only the worst aspects of our material legacy will endure. Plastics will be around for thousands of years, if not longer; the same with rubber. Sadly, a Texas-sized piece of Pacific ocean covered with floating man-made debris — literally a sea of garbage — will serve as a monument to humanity indefinitely, or at least until something evolves to devour all of those tasty polymers. Another piece of our proud legacy will be 441 abandoned nuclear plants. The reactor core of the average plant, after spewing significant amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, would “[congeal] into a deadly, dull metallic blob: a tombstone to the intellect that created it.” The accompanying nuclear wastes would be around as long as chemistry and the laws of physics dictate.
Even a fortress will eventually succumbs to the forces of nature.
It is depressing to consider that our most regrettable and destructive creations will serve to testify to our existence long after we are gone (it would take about 100,000 years for the earth to reabsorb all of the carbon dioxide we’ve pumped into the atmosphere); but as I said, this is not a depressing book. Despite all of the harm human beings have done to nature, it will survive. Though we like to flatter ourselves with ideas of grandiosity and power, in the big scheme of things, we’re just another species trying to make its way in the world. It’s a strangely uplifting idea. While it does not absolve us of our obligation to clean up our act, it does make us feel just a little bit more optimistic about the future, whether we’re around for it or not.
In a general sense, what Weisman ultimately recommends is that humankind step back and learn to curb its procreative and consumptive instincts, to live more thoughtfully. We must realize that humanity is a part of nature and not in opposition to it. Besides, based on the evidence, we would surely lose a war of attrition.
The World Without Us is the kind of book you want everyone to read, that you want to press into the hands of strangers and say, “Take a look at this.” I came away from it seeing things a little differently, in some ways radically differently. I am sure other readers will too. Possessing a wide appeal and fascinating premise, this book could change minds. Perhaps best of all though, it’s a great read. Lucid, comprehensive, imaginative — it has more to recommend it than the good intentions of its author. So, I will finally leave you with a piece of advice I hope you will soon be giving to strangers: Take a look at this.
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