The World Without Us
Featured Topic | Posted 38 weeks 2 days ago

Why are we so fascinated with the end of humanity?

First it was Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us." Then it was History Channel's "Life After People." Now the National Geographic Channel channel has "Aftermath: Population Zero." The question asked in all these works is the same -- what would Earth look like if humanity disappeared?

What would the Earth look like? And why are we so fascinated with the question?

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Ben likes: Wealth between our ears

Jonah Goldberg/National Review

People have long been fascinated by such ideas. There’s even an environmental fringe group called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, dedicated to the dream of Earth returned to the pastoral bliss of the noble savage, hold the noble savages.

More typical, however, is the fixation on imagining the world emptied not of everybody but of everybody else. That was the plan of several James Bond villains, countless sci-fi writers, and more than a few eugenicists who fantasized about starting from scratch with just a handful of humans.

The seductiveness of such daydreaming stems from a view of humans as a burden rather than a boon.

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Joel likes: The world without us

Gary Kamiya/Salon

"How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines? How long would it take to recover lost ground and restore Eden to the way it must have gleamed and smelled the day before Adam, or homo habilis, appeared? Could nature ever obliterate all our traces?"

Not surprisingly, it's pretty clear that the Earth can take everything we throw at it. But there's a disquieting flip side: If we keep on going as we are now, the Earth may physically survive, but we won't. And even if we survive, the world as we know it will no longer exist.

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