Olson’s Observations

Typically I don’t find books I want to read by simply walking into a bookstore and browsing but that is exactly how I found Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us.” I had just finished Positively False and was heading toward my gate at SFO to catch a flight back to Chicago when I spotted it. After reading the jacket I knew it was a book I’d love.

The basic premise of the book is what the title succinctly states. The book is an exploration of what the world would become if humans ceased to exist (albeit not through a disaster - it looks at the world if we simply disappeared one day).

That concept and the archaeological side of the book are what attracted me at first. I was incredibly curious what future beings would find from our modern day civilization 500, 1,000 and 10,000 years from now. However, when I really dove into the book on the flight back to Chicago I was treated to a well researched work that really got me thinking even more about what we, as humans, have done to our planet.

The information Weisman puts forth is far more compelling than Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” in my mind because it looks at environmental issues from a completely different angle than Gore did.

Weisman looks at how long it will take everything we have done to the planet to reverse itself rather than what will happen if we continue on as we have been.

It is troubling to read page after page about how long it will take for the world to heal itself. The most interesting piece of the book in terms of how we’ve harmed the planet was the section on plastics. The plastics that we have produced over the past fifty years or so will be around for thousands of years to come even if we don’t produce any more as of right now.

We humans truly have been parasites on this planet in much the same way the aliens in the movie Independence Day were but there is a happy ending and it lies in our brains.

We humans are smart and we understand what we are doing to our planet and that it needs to stop. It remains to be seen if we have the wisdom needed to enact some things that will help nature fight back but I believe we can and will.

The other silver lining is that nature is ferociously resilient and will renew itself should we begin to lessen the strain we place on the planet.

In time I hope we learn to live in harmony with nature which we will be able to do as soon as we realize that we’re no different than any other species. We can also become extinct and maybe even take our whole planet down with us if we’re not careful.

The World Without Us is a must read for all human beings as it will get anyone who reads it to start seriously thinking about our impact on our home. Weisman should be commended for such a well written and researched book.