The Lonely Planet

Alan Weisman contemplates The World Without Us

By Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 5/15/2007

What would happen if human beings disappeared from the face of the Earth? In just two days, for example, New York City's subways would flood without constant pumping, and in 20 years Lexington Avenue would cave in and become a river. Three hundred years would transform today's asphalt jungles into real ones as rusted skyscrapers and bridges collapse and cities built on river deltas are washed away. While it would take 35,000 years for lead deposited during the industrialage to be finally cleansed from the soil, bronze sculptures would still be recognizable ten million years from now. Sadly, though, Earth and all remaining life would cease to exist in five billion years as our dying sun consumed itself and itssurrounding planets.

These provocative scenarios may sound like apocalpytic science fiction, but The World Without Us (see review on p. 113) outlines these well-researched speculations to help readers understand how human activities have shaped our planet for better or for worse. Having reported for many years on the environment for such publications as Harper's, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and Discover Magazine, journalist and author Alan Weisman (Gaviotas! A Village To Save the World) found it increasingly frustrating to write honestly about the environmental crisis we currently face without being so demoralizing and frightening that people didn't want to read his reports.

"I had been looking for a long time for some kind of literary device that would allow me to seduce readers into following a story that would educate them as profoundly and as completely as possible on exactly what the world is against and give them a sense of what must be done," explains Weisman. Thus, when an editor at Discover Magazine suggested that he write an article about what the world would be like if human beings suddenly vanished, Weisman was intrigued.

"All these thoughts just sprang into my mind. How would the environment react without our constant pressures? What would happen to all the toxins and poisions that we have loaded into the atmosphere? How long would it take before all that stuff was eventually absorbed by nature? And the more I thought about it, I realized this premise was a very interesting device because it could get readers to think about these issues but not in such a doom-and-gloom way."

Although the article, "Earth Without People," published in the February 2005 issue of Discover, was eventually selected for the anthology The Best American Science Writing 2006 (a "nice coda"), Weisman was never completely happy with the final essay. Realizing he never was going to be able to incorporate all his research into one article, the author submitted the several different drafts he had written as part of his book proposal.

The 11 pages of acknowledgments and extensive bibliography in The World Without Us reflects Weisman's impressive globe-trotting research, ranging from a Polish medieval forest and the Korean Demilitarized Zone to New York City's subway tunnels and an isolated coral reef in the South Pacific. A part-time appointment as an associate professor of journalism and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona requires Weisman to teach only one class in the spring semester, freeing the rest of his year to travel. The journalist was also fortunate to have a few important sources right there in Arizona. One was paleoecologist Paul Martin, the celebrated proponent of the Blitzkrieg theory that claims that overhunting by humans migrating into various continents wiped out such Pleistocene megafauna as the wooly mammoths and New Zealand's flightless moas. "Paul used to be my neighbor," says Weisman. "Just to have the opportunity to sit down and talk with him for hours was wonderful and very convenient.

For Weisman, the most satisfying part of his research was the response when he told people about this project. There was, he noticed, an initial wistful and nostalgic longing for the Garden of Eden (oh, wouldn't that be great!) followed by a delayed sadness at humanity's potential absence. People would talk about the good things human beings had done. "And I realized I had to do a chapter on the fine arts," comments the author, who is married to a sculptor. Indeed, Weisman found his discussion with artist Jon Lamberg, who designed the images and recordings on the unmanned interplanetary Voyager spacecrafts in 1977, to be a highlight of his research. "To talk to someone who believes so strongly in the significance of science and art and who joins the two together was especially moving for me.

"Weisman had started this project feeling depressed about where Earth was headed, but writing the book brought him an enormous amount of peace because he realized that life has been through this before. "The extinctions we are perpetrating now are nothing to previous extinctions and each time the earth has bounced back, more beautifully and in a more interesting fashion." When people read the book, Weisman hopes they will see how extraordinary a place our planet could be if our daily pressures weren't constantly part of the mix. "I don't hope to change the world with one book, but every bit counts, and this is my bit."