What would Earth be like without humans?

The book doesn’t lecture, but speculates on what would happen after humans die out.

By JESS DAVIS

SCRIPPS HOWARD FOUNDATION WIRE

The scenario — all of humanity disappears one day, leaving worldly possessions, buildings and trash behind.

What happens next is the subject of a new book, “The World Without Us,” by Alan Weisman, a journalism professor at the University of Arizona and a science writer.

It’s an implausible situation but gives a fresh take on the environmental challenges Earth faces because of human actions.

“If we theoretically wipe people off the Earth, we have a much clearer vision of what’s here without us,” Weisman said.

The book has been wildly popular since its July 10 release, reaching No. 6 on the New York Times best-seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and No. 26 on Amazon’s top-selling books.

In a sea of environment-focused books, Weisman’s stands out. It doesn’t lecture or try to impose guilt about the damages the reader may have inflicted on the world. It does paint a picture of hope that the Earth will slowly but surely reclaim its lands and seas.

Can be overwhelming

“It’s not that most people haven’t read about the environment, but it’s overwhelming,” Weisman said.

Weisman said most environmental writing creates a sense of fear in readers that they will one day die because the Earth can’t sustain them.

Weisman leads the reader on a tour of the globe, touching every continent except Antarctica, and jumps in time from early man to the present to far in the future.

One chapter is devoted to a detailed explanation how suburban neighborhoods could become forests and wildlife sanctuaries. In a typical house, 50 years after the humans have disappeared, the basement and pool are overrun by plants and the house is home to small animals.

Weisman also describes how plants and animals seem to bounce back faster than humans in areas where people have left. Birds returned to Chernobyl less than a year after the 1986 nuclear accident.

In New York

In Weisman’s fantasy future, the absence of humans in New York leads to the gradual collapse of skyscrapers. The Statue of Liberty survives, but as an underwater relic. The subways floods, and within 20 years, several Manhattan streets turn into rivers.

In the chapter “Polymers are Forever,” humanity has trumped nature. Humans’ plastic obsession is filling the oceans with plastic in every shape and form, and waves break it up into particles small enough to be eaten by plankton, attacking the food chain from the bottom up.

“Plastic bags should be outlawed,” Weisman said. He also suggested a plastic tax to encourage conservation and said Americans just don’t need to use as much plastic as they do.

The book doesn’t preach the rhetoric of reducing carbon footprints and buying hybrid cars, but Weisman said he hopes readers will be shocked by some of the lasting touches they’re leaving on the planet, and will change their behavior.

“I wrote this book so human beings could look at the world without us in it, and think about how we can be in this world but in a much more balanced relationship with nature,” he said.