Eat Humble Pie (The World Without Us - Alan Weisman)

Member Name: Eco-Mum

Product:	The World Without Us - Alan Weisman
Date:	07/10/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: An interesting twist that brings home the damage humans are causing to the world.

Disadvantages: Might be too heavy-going for those who really should read it.

What if - tomorrow or next week - all the humans on Earth suddenly left?
They didn't die in a mass disaster (so no bodies or fallout to take into account) but all of a sudden there were simply no humans anywhere on the planet. What would happen to the buildings left behind? The rubbish and pollution? Plants and animals? Earth itself.
The answers are very humbling. As you would probably guess, the majority of the inhabitants of Earth don't need us and would get on a lot better without us. What amazed me was how quickly we would be forgotten. Our cities, bridges and tarmac roads won't last long without human maintenance. A bit of frost and a few weed seeds will soon destroy them. There would be little evidence left for future archaeologists of who we were and what we did. But equally humbling are the things that we will leave behind - the radioactive waste, dioxins, PCBs and plastic fibres.
I learnt about the difficulties of providing adequate warnings to future generations about contaminated sites when the danger will exist for 10,000 years or more. I learnt how quickly the population explosion that has taken place since the Second World War could be reversed (it would mean more resources to go round and a better quality of life but our economic systems need an ever-increasing supply of consumers). I learnt that some facial and body scrubs contain tiny plastic beads that will go straight down the drain and into the ocean, where they will take thousands of years to decompose, and I learnt about the damage they will cause to the unwitting organisms that ingest them. Plenty to think about.

This review was also posted on the Facebook application Visual Bookshelf.

Summary: A very interesting book. Optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.