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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Withdrawal symptoms, 27 Nov 2007
According to some biologists, the Earth is suffering an "infestation". The afflicting organism, "Homo sapiens" has overrun the planet. The infection is recent, several thousand years old in its most virulent phase. During that brief period, however, the surface of the planet has been seriously transformed. Alan Weisman has confronted the impact of our infection of the biosphere with an entirely fresh approach. Relying little on speculation, excepting only what might make the human species disappear, he points up our environmental foot print describing how the planet would recover from what our presence has effected. A captivating read, this book is at once an indictment and a challenge to our intellect and our values.
The great metropolis of New York City is one focal point in this account. Once traversed by 40 meandering streams feeding the ocean and river, the island, but for its striking Central Park, is now "tamed". Massive buildings line its many kilometres of pavement, and the storm sewer systems have replaced Nature's waterways. Yet, those rivulets persist, demanding flow rights. The loss of humanity would shut down the 753 pumps that keep the subway tunnels relatively dry. The streams, assisted by the bordering river and ocean would quickly inundate them. The bridges' streams of vehicles haven't stopped the return of wildlife to the city, and human abandonment would accelerate the process. Botany's realm, however, may never recover its original domain. Too many human-introduced species have an irresistible foothold. Those tall buildings bracketing the asphalt ribbons would also ultimately break down, providing havens for birds and small mammals before succumbing. The one species we've all been taught to be the ultimate survivor - the kitchen cockroach - would disappear with the first harsh winter.
Weisman doesn't limit his account for his native land's reading audience, however. The entire planet becomes his information hunting ground. An ancient patch of forest in Eastern Europe has been protected for centuries by hunting noblemen. While the deletion of humans would allow the forest to expand, it's likely the confined herd of European bison would enjoy the same recovery. In our original homeland, the natural predator-prey balance would be briefly offset by the ready meals our domesticated animals would provide. Herds of cattle, goats and sheep in Africa, untutored by natural selection to avoid lions and cheetahs, would fill feline bellies. Where the big cats would rule undeterred for a time, many microbes would be forced to make some spectacular adjustments. Oil dumps and nuclear stations, slowly breaking down would flood the landscape with hydrocarbons and radiation. Some microbes are already resistant to radioactive elements while some can "eat" oil. Others would have to expand their range of comestibles by adapting to them over millennia. Whether similar adjustments might be made for the mass of plastics we've dumped into the world remains an open question, Weisman says.
Although his original premise may be fantasy, the crux of his discussion is based on solid science. His interviews are with people who are in a position to gauge how we affect the world. Some of them are in place to prevent the recursion of nature into the habitat we've created for our species' benefit. One, archaeologist Arthur Demarest, is investigating a small segment of "the world without us", the site of the Maya realm. The 1600-year-long reign of those Central American people must have seemed "destined to thrive forever". The "spectacular, sudden collapse" took only a century. The return of the rainforest hides their existence from European invaders' eyes for another millennium.
Although Weisman's view of a dehumanised planet is compelling, almost desirable, he knows neither he nor his readership would be pleased by our extinction. We want to go on existing. Yet, he notes, "every four days, the world population rises by four million" - a clearly unsustainable rate of growth. Weisman has a scenario for survival, but its application would have to be nearly as instantaneous as his scenario of disappearance. His aim is curtailment of the human infestation - by the "draconian measure" of universal birth control. He argues that every human female must be limited to producing but one offspring. A challenging scenario, obviously, but one which he argues would reduce the planet's infesting species to a total of 1.6 billion by the end of this century. The number's validity may be disputed, but the goal is admirable. Could such a scenario possibly be envisioned, let alone implemented? It's that, he says, or a new wave of human colonisation - on other planets. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and disturbing, 23 Nov 2007
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!!! I would also recommended: Tino Georgiou's bestselling novel --The Fates. If you were one of the few who missed it.
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35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What an interesting idea and book, 15 July 2007
I first heard of this book when it was reviewed in the Guardian and is definitly an interesting and thought provoking exercise.
Weisman does not explain how every single Human man, woman and child has gone but they all have, leaving the world and its cities empty except for flora, fauna, wildlife, etc. and then explains how the world would cope, adapt etc to our absence.
Perhaps not surprisingly the World seems better off when it loses 6 billion people, lol! And Wildlife soon feels a difference, for example the Lions and Leopards have no serious predators and lots of unguarded cattle, sheep and goats to hunt so its boom time for them and a similar story for the African elephants as no one is hunting them for their ivory anymore and no more culls.
it seems also that little will be left of us after a few generations, metal objects like cars will rust away, grass and trees will take over farmlands, gardens, parks and even roads. Most of todays housing without maintenance will be badly damaged after a few winters blowing in windows, taking off roofs, plus of course flood damage. What would survive is many of the ancient objects like the Pyramids which have been around several thousands years already, large cathedrals and surprisingly the Channel Tunnel, little else though!
maybe something would evolve to fill the gap our absence creates and use some of the left behind tools or equipment. The writer agrgues that maybe baboons would start to evolve in this way.
Its an interesting book.
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