I’m in the middle of a captivating (and a bit overdue, according to the Wake library) book called The World Without Us by Alex Weisman. Weisman takes a look at how the things we take for granted in modern life would fare if we suddenly up and simply vanished. Its a thought-provoking premise.
The book both gives me hope and fills me with despair: hope that the concrete and steel with which we surround ourselves is ultimately no match for water, nature’s secret weapon. Nature will someday reclaim almost all of our structures, as if we weren’t here. The species we’ve already killed off will of course remain extinct, however. At least one way we’ll have made a difference!
The despair comes from learning in even greater detail how plastics are now killing off large swaths of marine life (as I first heard of as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Even more troubling is that the plastic problem has no easy solution. Once a polymer, always a polymer.
I’ll have to return the book to the library before I’m done, but I’m thinking of buying my own copy. Its a book worth returning to.
I have been searching for the text of the introduction to an old book, “Van Loon’s Geography”. It was on my Grandfather’s book shelf and was apparently essential to the well educated gentleman of the early 20th century. It reflects a very different view of man’s impact on the planet. In the introduction, Van Loon wishes to emphasize the magnificence of the Earth’s geography compared to man. He describes a box that is 1 mile in every dimension precariously balanced on the wall at the top of the Grand Canyon’s most prominent viewing area. He then says that all of mankind could be packed away in that box and the whole thing tipped into the canyon. Mankind and his works would disappear into the vastness of our planet.
Now we know that our great halls and monuments will erode away; but, our wastes and poisons will long remain. How sad.
Actually, while our wastes will remain (especially Uranium, with a half-life of billions of years – outliving the planet itself – and dioxins which will practically never break down), our buildings and monuments made of stone will last a long, long time.
There is also quite a few more people on the planet than there was when your grandfather bought his book. Even so, some think all of mankind could still fit in the Grand Canyon.
I’m at the part of the book discussing Chernobyl. Every time I read about that disaster it makes me want to scream. And by the way … every single one of the U.S.’s 441 nuclear plants will eventually melt down if the people who tend them disappeared.
I read that there was a European cathedral that was built to last forever. They put 4 inches of lead on the roof in an early attempt to create the maintenance free roof. It started leaking in the 1960s. The lead flowed like water over hundreds of years, leaving it paper thin at the peak and 7 inches thick at the edge. I think that while the stone will still be there, the images will be pretty eroded…