A World Without Us

Written by Darren Moore Thursday, 01 October 2009 00:00

Alan Weisman - 336 pages - Thomas Dunne Books (2007)

What would happen if, all of a sudden and all at once, humanity just disappeared? This is the premise for Alan Weisman's book, "The World Without Us." Arguing that the main reason environmental debate is so heated is because of our central position within it, he thought, 'why not take humanity out of the picture?' The result is a thoughtful and deliberate study on how quickly the environment would revert back to it's natural state; the New York City subway system would flood within three days; Lexington Avenue would collapse into a river within 20-30years; steel bridges would stand as islands amidst a crumbing metropolis, themselves lasting roughly 300 years.

Weisman isn't just speculating - he interviews structural engineers and experts to determine timelines, and visits the Chernobyl site and a corner of Cyprus called Varosha, both places where humans evacuated quickly and left the surrounding infrastructure to decompose, (Chernobyl due to the nuclear accident, Cyprus, due to war). Walking into a hotel lobby in Varosha, he sees the guest registry on the counter still open to the date of the evacuation; surrounded by a sand dune and broken glass. Giant wild bougainvilleas hang off the hotel rooftops, while ten and fifteen-foot tall trees grow out of cracked streets.

As well as urban-collapse, he describes the 'un-building' of the average suburban home, including what would happen to our toxic wastes - especially the legacy of plastic, and how flora and fauna would adapt to our absence. But as reassuring as this book is should we ever slip en-masse off the earth, it makes plain the real challenge of our time; to make a difference before the world decides it really is better off without us.