_The World Without Us, written by Alan
Weisman, was published 1 September, and
I had acquired and read it by 7 September
after hearing Weisman interviewed that
day on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." The
book is a fascinating look at what would
happen to houses, nuclear plants, cities,
forests, fauna, climate, the oceans, bronze,
petro-chemical complexes and plastics,
amongst even more than that, over time
(stretching out to three or four million
years for plastics and the 441 nuclear
power plants extant in the world).


Weisman visited odd places - a forest in
Poland, a deserted resort "on the wrong
saide of the lines" in Varosha, Cyprus, the
Aberdares moors of Kenya, the Serengeti
desert, the caves of Cappadocia, Turkey,
Plymouth England, the North Pacific
Subtropical Gyre, Houston Texas, the
Rothamsted Research facility in Harpenden
England, the Korean DMZ, the Panama
Canal, and many of the extinctions of the
past couple centuries.

His book is described as a "thought
experiment," and it is a very
thought-provoking look at a world without
humans. Its only flaw, in my estimation, is
no exploration of *how* humans might all
disappear, and the difficulties that might
arise planetarily if a great die-off occurred,
for example. In a sense, he almost posits a
Rapture-like event wherein humans just
vanish, and how the planet might change
after that. He also has a web page -
www.worldwithoutus.com - with animations
showing the disintegration of New York,
a Scientific American animation of a similar
nature I can't get to play on my computer,
and an animation about the vanishing of a
house over 500 years (by year 375, almost
no evidence that a house even existed is
left).

I thought it quite readable, intriguing, and
dealing with a really mind-bending premise -
how would the planet behave if its most
complex and affecting critter disappeared? VMS


Note: Written Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:02:23

Unedited as of 13 October, 2007