Field Notes

Written by Alan Weisman (2007)
Harper Collins, Toronto
324pp; $ 32 (Canada hard cover)

By Claudia Cochrane, M.Sc., P.Geo.

What if our species were to disappear - every one of us - overnight? How would the planet fare? What would happen to our cities? Our grand engineering feats? Our artistic expressions? Will any sign of us remain on the blue planet to tell future conscious beings that we were here?

Several years ago, journalist Alan Weisman wrote an article about the speed with which nature re-occupied the environs of Chernobyl, continued radioactivity emissions notwithstanding. The broader issue about the fate of other doomed or threatened tracts on our planet when we are gone, stimulated his imagination, as it will the reader's. He has surveyed the literature, interviewed experts, and toured the planet to view sites, both pristine and damaged, for himself. The World Without Us is a compilation of his discoveries and musings.

For environmental geoscientists, effects and theory are vividly portrayed - with descriptions of human impact upon our first arrival and of unfettered nature after our departure. And for historical geologists, this work is a little 'mind-bender exercise' in our never-ending quest to fathom the 4th dimension. It takes years to inculcate a geologist with this faculty - the intuitive comprehension of what we humans call time, measured in terms of millions and billions of years. Weisman's speculations provide an opportunity for us to practice that temporal exercise in a forward direction as well as back.

Weisman is at his best as a globe-trotter in search of unique ecological sites. He has found several mini-laboratories where the effect of human influence, or even better, the lack of it, can be measured and described.

Some of those places are working just fine - as long as we are here to manage them. The New York Subway is one of the most famous and effective in the world. Unfortunately, it was excavated from below the water-table and has to be pumped continuously day and night. Two days of inactivity would result in the flooding of the whole system. After 20 years, the pavement above, broken up by frost heave and invading plants from Central Park, would collapse into the void below, and Lexington Avenue would become a river. As steel foundations are water-logged from below and hurricanes pummel the sky scrapers from above, these mighty behemoths will topple over, and "gradually the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one".

Chemical Alley in Texas, the source of much of the United States' refined petroleum products would be relatively safe, as long as the last humans flipped off all the switches before leaving their final shift. The light gasses will eventually dissipate into the air and the sulphur byproducts dissolve into acid rain. But, if the safety switches are not activated? Gas travelling from one pipe to another would create fires throughout the whole facility. The blaze would go on for weeks and noxious gasses would be ejected into the atmosphere. Multiply that by all the chemical plants around the world. Picked up by the trade winds, they could create a mini chemical nuclear winter. Fortunately, this grim picture improves with time and we are reminded of humankind's relatively minor role in the grand scheme. For in spite of all the toxins, the soil will be carbon enriched and grasses and wild flowers will eventually herald the resumption of life.

And what of the international engineering feats? The chunnel linking England with France, was excavated through impervious chalk and is surprisingly durable: "... it has one of the best chances of any human artifact to last millions of years, until continental drift finally pulls it apart or scrunches it like an accordion." It might even be a route for continental animals to recolonize Britain: "Surely, as small, curious creatures like voles or the inevitable Norway rats slither down the Chunnel, some brash young wolf will follow their scent."

The same cannot be said for the Great Wall of China which, without human maintenance, will be quickly eroded by tree roots and acid rain. Conversely, the statues on Mt. Rushmore, carved into fine-grained granite, will be around for another seven million years, more time than it took our primate ancestors to become us. Therefore, "Should some equally ingenious, confounding, lyrical, and conflicted species appear on Earth again in our aftermath, they may still find Theodore Roosevelt's fierce, shrewd gaze fixed intently upon them."

Other sites have never know human occupation. Half a million acres of the Bialowieza Puszcza on the border between Poland and Belarus contains Europe's last remaining fragment of old-growth low-land forest. Redolent of Grimm's fairy tales this relic that once stretched from Ireland to Siberia, was preserved by the privileged classes of Europe for use as an exclusive royal hunting ground. In the absence of humans, all Europe could look like this again within 500 years.

Some sites have already been abandoned. The "Green Line" on Cyprus was drawn wherever opposing troops found themselves at the exact moment of the cease-fire in 1974. As a result the newly completed tourist destination of Varosha was abandoned. Brand new beach hotels and restaurants were left empty, standing in eerie silence at the moment of truce between the warring factions. Nothing was done to sort out the boundary issue and 30 years later the crumbling concrete buildings are covered with brightly flowered, richly foliaged plants and occupied by various forms of reptiles.

There is a similar story in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that splits the two parts of Korea. It follows rivers and streams through a mountainous district thickly sown with land mines. Ignoring the khaki-clad soldiers, who brandish machine guns from both sides of the DMZ, large mammals have migrated in and it has become a refuge for bears, lynx, deer, martens, mountain goats and other threatened species. Some naturalists are lobbying to have the land mines cleared out so it can be made into an eco-tourist destination to be shared by all the people of Korea.

The Chernobyl story is particularly chilling, since there are another 441 functioning nuclear plants around the world. If their human custodians disappeared, they would "run on autopilot until, one by one, they overheated." Eventually, "...the spilling of radioactivity into the air, and into nearby bodies of water, would be formidable, and it would last, in the case of enriched uranium, into geologic time."

And what of cultural artifacts - works of art and architecture, our "many manifestations of the spirit"? The pre-World War II architecture of Istanbul, more than a thousand years old, is some of the most beautiful and structurally sound in the world. It will outlast us and then be preserved with burial. But in the last half century, the city's population has increased by 30 fold and a multitude of multi-story, cheaply-built, reinforced concrete buildings now line Istanbul's narrow streets. Within 30 years, when the North Anatolian Fault slips again (notice when, not if) many of these newer buildings will crumble. It is the same problem the world over - "planet-wide piles of low bids that will come crashing down in a posthuman world."

Most of our visual arts have not and will not survive - only those bronze statues that have not been melted down into weapons; and ceramics with the characteristics of fossils, and may excite the interest of future archeologists, much as shards of pottery do today. Of all the arts, "music may have the best chance to echo on", as it rides on indestructable radio waves away to the outermost edges of the universe.

This is only a 'what if' story. It is not a tale of Armageddon. There is no suggestion that humans will actually be removed in the near future, other than by the eventual and inevitable death of all species by extinction. In both the initial and final chapters, The World Without Us stresses that humans do not have to depart from this world to achieve the described results - either good or bad. We can continue on as we have so far, and be forced to live in the resulting squalor; or we can alter some things, and see our innate creativity and spirit bloom within our own home planet.

Alan Weisman's vision and his pen have taken him far and wide with a myriad of details and prospects incorporated into this book. Nonetheless, the information and conclusions are based on credible scientific sources and the opinions of recognized specialists, even if they don't always agree with each other. To take the best advantage of this volume, readers should give the scientific parts of their minds a short holiday. Suspend temporal observation and systematic analysis for a while and suffuse the intellect with allusions, images and speculation. Wander through that ancient Polish forest smelling the dank primitive woodland; view a depleted New York from the vantage point of raptors nesting in the skeletons of sky scrapers; burrow through the ancient underground cities of Cappadocia, still undamaged after thousands of years; snorkel in the New York Harbour to view the still intact, but barnacle-covered, bronze Statue of Liberty; bask in the moonlight on the Cyprus beach of Varosha crawling with green sea turtles. Then, wake up, come back to what you were trained for, and apply this new-found perspective to the rigorous discipline of daily scientific practice.