Did you know that the Grand Canyon is big enough to hold the entire population of the world? What about the fact that the fertilizer-choked dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi is larger than New Jersey? (As an aside, did you know that factory farms in Missouri are a contributor to the growing oxygen-depleted dead zone spreading across the Gulf of Mexico?) These and other facts can be found in the book by Alan Weisman entitled The World Without Us.
What would our planet be like if we humans just suddenly vanished? This is the theme of Weisman’s intriguing book. The good news is that our planet would likely recover from human depredation, but in the case of plastic for example, it might take thousands of years to break down or possibly morph into something else.
Interestingly, the sub-prime loan scam is having an immediate, observable environmental impact in southern California. As foreclosures increase many homeowners are simply abandoning their houses--along with their swimming pools.
A concern is the sitting water in these pools is a breeding ground for mosquitoes, and more worrisome the possible appearance of West Nile virus. Also, the drug-addicted ornamental lawns are rapidly turning brown. No one is around to pour pesticides and fertilizer on these artificial greenscapes, followed up by gallons of water.
But Weisman suggests that some positive changes might result even if humanity didn’t completely disappear. The catch, however, is that we’d have to make some drastic changes in both our behavior and, yes, in our population.
Weisman believes we would have to reduce our population by 2100 to where it was in the 19th century, less than 2 billion people. At present we have 6.5 billion humans living on planet Earth.
