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    The World Without Us

    published on Fri. Jan. 11th, '08 by Sita Chaitanya

    Recently I finished reading "The World Without Us", by Alan Weisman. When I started the book I was under the misconception that it was only about what would happen to the world if suddenly and inexplicably all the people just disappeared. I expected the author to take us on a journey into the future describing alternate scenarios of what could happen; which human constructions would survive into the future and which wouldn't.

    the world without us cover

    Heavily researched, this book is so much more than that. Alan Weisman does, in some examples, describe what may happen in the future, but he also goes far back into prehistoric times and suggests how the world's flora and fauna might be different today if people had not been around doing what they were doing during certain periods in the past.

    Within recent historic times, reefs swarmed with 800-pound groupers, codfish could be dipped from the sea by lowering baskets, and oysters filtered all the water in Chesapeake Bay every three days.

    Also unexpected was the descriptiveness the author uses to bring the book alive. To help make his points about the magnificence of nature when left to her own devices, he uses examples of little known facts about animals and plants that are amazingly fascinating.

    green turtle

    For example, when talking about Canada's Northwest Territories, he says this about the musk ox and their pelage (wool) which has nearly led to their extinction:

    The chestnut pelage of the musk ox is the warmest organic fiber known, with eight times the insulating factor of sheep's wool. Known in Inuit as qiviut, it renders musk oxen so impervious to cold that they're literally invisible to infrared satellite cameras used to track caribou herds.
    musk ox

    Of course it turns out throughout history that in the overwhelming majority of cases, people mostly wrecked nature whenever they got to it. That realization, laid out over and over again with specific examples is a little depressing, especially when the worst environmental destruction ever is happening now.

    Later in the book Weisman describes various environmental and other groups who offer suggestions from the bizarre to the original and thought-provoking as to how we humans could potentially get along with our environment and live in harmony and balance with it.

    lily with dew drops

    At the end the reader is left with hope that life on earth will continue no matter what humans do. That idea is captured by this thought from Enric Sala, a conservation marine biologist from Barcelona:

    I'm so amazed by the ability of life to hang on to anything. Given the opportunity, it goes everywhere. A species as creative and arguably intelligent as our own should somehow find a way to achieve a balance. We have a lot to learn, obviously. But I haven't given up on us.

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