Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4875 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-10
• Released on: 2007-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. If a virulent virus—or even the Rapture—depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished? That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation. Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment—what would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished—Weisman has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted house. Among the highlights: with pumps not working, the New York City subways would fill with water within days, while weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets and wild predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas’s unattended petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen cyanide to the winds—a "mini chemical nuclear winter." After thousands of years, the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a billion tons of plastic might remain, but eventually a polymer-eating microbe could evolve, and, with the spectacular return of fish and bird populations, the earth might revert to Eden.
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From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Michael Grunwald

If human beings vanished from the Earth, our ceramic pottery and bronze statues would last much longer than our wood-frame houses. New York's subways would be flooded within days; Lexington Avenue would be a river within decades. Head lice would go extinct, and predators would make short work of our doggies, but a lot of endangered fish and birds and trees would flourish in our absence. We endangered them, after all.

A diligent and intelligent science writer named Alan Weisman discovered all this while investigating what would happen to this planet if people suddenly disappeared. Now he has converted his thought experiment for Discover magazine into a deeply reported book called The World Without Us, and it's full of interesting facts. For example: The European starling spread like avian kudzu after some Shakespeare buff introduced every bird mentioned by the Bard into Central Park. The demilitarized (and therefore depopulated) zones of Korea and Cyprus have become undeclared wildlife sanctuaries; so have Chernobyl and abandoned forests in New England and Belarus. Almost every ounce of plastic that's ever been manufactured still lurks somewhere in our environment. And radio waves are forever, so extraterrestrials at the edge of the universe might be able to watch "I Love Lucy" reruns billions of years after we're gone. Who knew?

Also: Who cares?

Ultimately, The World Without Us is trivia masquerading as wisdom. By journeying around the world to interview biologists and paleontologists, engineers and curators, Zápara elders and Masai ecoguides, Weisman has done a remarkably thorough job of answering a question that doesn't particularly matter. Imagining the human footprint on a post-human planet might be fun for dormitory potheads who have already settled the questions of God's existence and Fergie's hotness, but it's not clear why the rest of us need this level of documentary evidence. It's nice to know that domesticated plants (like wheat) and animals (like horses) would be out-competed by their wild counterparts post-us, but it's not inherently important to know. If the larger point is that our domesticated plants and animals are not really natural, well, that we already know.

When Weisman does make larger points, they are achingly familiar. Yes, man is doing foolishly destructive things -- like warming the climate with carbon and tearing the peaks off mountains and littering the oceans with plastics -- that will have long-term consequences for the Earth. This no longer qualifies as news. And yes, nature and the Earth are resilient, while man and his works -- with exceptions such as Mount Rushmore, the caves of Cappadocia, and Styrofoam -- are fleeting. Ozymandias could have told us that. And while Weisman is an admirable reporter, his prose -- always lucid, sometimes elegant -- has an irritating look-ma-I'm-writing quality. This is how he describes one guy he meets: "His olive features bespeak Sicily; his voice is pure urban New Jersey." I think he's bespeaking of an "Italian-American." It's not an exotic species around Jersey.

For all its existential ruminations, this is basically an environmental book, an imaginative effort to make us think about our impact on the Earth. It reminds us: This is a nice Earth! It's going to be around for millions of years, and we're not, so let's stop littering it with nuclear reactors and plastic bags that will leave toxic messes long after we're gone! But as Weisman demonstrates, the Earth will do just fine without us. It's an excellent healer, and time -- especially geologic time -- is an even better one.

Actually, there's a much more compelling reason for us to stop despoiling the Earth and depleting its resources: If we don't, we might create that world without us. As Jared Diamond has shown, unsustainable civilizations tend to collapse; as countless environmental writers have shown, our gas-guzzling, water-wasting, plastic-producing civilization is not sustainable. This is an issue of policy and morality, not just theory.

Weisman knows this, but he believes that people don't like to hear about environmental destruction in those apocalyptic terms. It's too scary. He describes his ruminations as a non-threatening effort to change hearts and minds through indirection. If we imagine the world without us -- even though Weisman makes it sound as if the world could be better off without us -- we might start taking care of it. But just in case this philosophical bank shot proves insufficient, Weisman does offer one modest proposal in his final chapter, his single policy solution to all the planet's problems. And it's preposterous: "limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one." Sure, right after we ration air, outlaw war and limit teenage masturbation to once a week.

Even as a thought experiment, a one-child policy is a terrible idea, a draconian one-size-fits-all solution to a variety of complex problems. (In America, for starters, our problem is overconsumption, not overpopulation.) It's also exactly the kind of nature-first idea that makes environmentalism so threatening to so many people. Humanity's goal should be to limit our impact on the Earth, not to limit our presence on Earth. We don't have to do it for the Earth's sake; we should do it for our own sake. It's our home.

At one of those depressingly apocalyptic environmental conferences, I recently heard a speaker give the best argument I've ever heard for saving the Earth: "It's the only planet we know of that has chocolate." There probably wouldn't be chocolate in a world without us. And even if there were, it wouldn't do us much good.

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

An interesting essay
Alan Weisman's book is an extension of a previous essay article, and unfortunately, that is how it often reads. The chapters (and sections within chapters) jump from subject to subject and through different time lines without real feeling for order or reason. The statements he makes are backed up by well researched evidence and via discussion with some very interesting characters but sometimes, one gets lost in trying to figure out what the point is of each section, rather than go with the flow.

However, he does make some very interesting and important points in regards to human impact and the fact that there are large numbers of species and populations that will not even notice that we are gone. He does also point out the fact that some of our inventions are likely to still be hanging around for mellenia and beyond.

Overall it is an interesting read, though I feel that if it was written by someone with more of a science background rather than journalistic, than it would have made for excellent reading.

Interesting Conjecture on the State of the World Without Humans
Weisman offers us an interesting glimpse of how the world would be if humanity ceased to exist tomorrow. He explores several interesting places around the world and asks experts in various Fields such as Plastics, Horticulture, Forestry, Pertroleum, and others how long it would take for various manmade structures to deteriorate and what the effects of this would be?

Over all he makes it sound as though 20th and 21st Century humans are a Bane to the Earth and it would be better for us to become extinct. He does however show how many people are making progress in making others aware of environmental condidtions and trying to reverse their impact.

His best chapter describes what would happen to New York City if people disappeared and there was no one left to repair the infrastructure. He describes how the roads, buildings, sewers, subways, and other manmade objects would slowly disappear into the reemerging forest like Ur of the Chaldees disappeared into the Desert when the course of the Euphrates changed.

Another chapter I found interesting was the one on the Petroleum producing centers of the Houston and Galveston areas in Texas. The 'nuclear winter' that might hapen if humans disappeared and the fascilities fell into disrepair and exploded. This was especially poignant this week as the Colonial Pipeline mentioned was shut down By hurricane Gustav and we all the way east in Charlotte NC has no Gasoline!!

I would say it is a great book to make you more environmentally conscious. It is also a great What if to make you ponder a Future without us.

The World Without Us
A wonderful book. Anyone who cares about the world they live it should read it. And those that do not should read it twice.