My Green Life

What would happen to the earth if humans were to be suddenly removed? Alan Weisman’s book, “The World Without Us” provides some insightful predictions about how the world would look in this scenario, and I am both heavy-hearted and uplifted at the predictions. Many objects we have created in this world will disappear quite rapidly if humans were to suddenly disappear altogether from the planet. Floods would quickly erode buildings while rain and wind disintegrates the roofs that used to keep us dry. New York would flood especially quickly without all the man-power required on a regular basis to constantly pump the water out of the city after heavy rains in order to prevent flooding. Without fires being fought, lightening would cause other man-made construction to quickly be returned to ash. The world would be fairly unrecognizable to us within a short period of time.

However, one item would remain for thousands of years. Plastic. It is everywhere. And it is not going anywhere. These polymers don’t just end up in landfills unexposed to the air or sunlight necessary to break them down. They primarily end up right in the middle of our oceans, huddled together like penguins trying to keep warm. The North Pacific gyre, or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as it is affectionately nicknamed, alone is roughly the size of Africa and it contains 10 million square miles of collected debris from every continent. Since the creation of plastics during World War II, plastic has been thoughtlessly discarded. Everything from plastic bags (that are easily replaced with reusable bags) to ubiquitous plastic pellets known as nurdles to get this… plastic exfoliants in body washes! Those little pellets that help your skin feel soft and smooth are little tiny balls of noxious plastic. These plastic pieces are carried down the shower drain into the ocean for marine life to consume the seemingly harmless yet dangerous material.

The faint ray of hope gleaned from all this knowledge is the fact that nature is very smart when humans aren’t busy interfering. Microorganisms will most likely adapt over time to be able to break down plastic. Nature is resilient and has proven time after time that it will adapt to a changing environment in order to survive. In Africa, the magafauna has lasted much longer then the large mammalia on other continents due to the animals’ ability to evolve simultaneously with humans. On every other planet, humans have simply intruded and exploited the large fauna. Let’s look at New Zealand for a moment. The moa is a very large flightless bird that looks very much like an ostrich on steroids. There were thousands of them successfully living and breeding until humans came along unsuspectingly with little warning and even less time to adapt. That story as you might have guessed, ends with the rapid extermination of the moa. However, in Africa, humans were evolving AND the mega fauna were adapting as humans gained more knowledge and tools. The mega fauna had time to adjust and react to a growing human civilization, and they were intelligent enough to evolve essential adaptations in order to survive.

The animals and the world will adapt and it will heal itself. The large scar we inflicted upon the world that is also known as the Panama Canal is another example of the self-healing power the earth possesses. It took some 6,000 men seven years to create this canal, and it requires constant human care and attention to assure that the world does not heal this wound. Without human interference, the canal would not remain a canal for long.

So, it appears, at this moment in human history the world would recover from our large footprints left all over it in time. But, I do not suspect that the human population will vanish tomorrow, or that it will suddenly live in a sustainable manner. Therefore, this book serves as our “two-minute warning” that with all the expansion and human population growth taking place, we all must become better stewards of the land. The world is a great self-healer. It will heal itself, and all its beauty will endure. The only question that remains is whether we will be able to stick around and enjoy it.