The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is ... well, I'm not sure whether to term it fiction or non-fiction, but it's an above-average environmental novel. The idea is to project what would happen if all humans suddenly disappeared from earth. Weisman starts with a deserted New York City with flooded subways and invasive imported trees, and continues to hop through the world to places like the Panama Canal, the Pyramids at Giza, and Mount Rushmore (hint: only one of these will last for a long time, and it might not be what you expect). Without humans cleaning and clearing and keeping the natural world at bay, how long would things last, and what would go first? Did you know that if you abandoned your house, in a few hundred thousand years, all they'd find found be your bathroom tile? It's like a pre-made fossil.
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So the chemistry is pretty much spot-on. I love reading about how different building materials or plastics degrade, and as a thought experiment goes, it's pretty fascinating to think about the encroaching entropy of the natural world. Sometimes, when he turns to biology, Weisman follows the environmental party line a bit too easily -- is it really reasonable to project sea levels high enough to overcome the cliffs of Dover? -- and there's a bit too much of the "if we only left it alone, how wonderful it would all be" sense. But then he quickly turns back to the chemistry and it gets fun again.
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I should have expected that the ending of this story would be the most predictable. Weisman visits the usual Zero Population Growth suspects, even finding a society advocating self-extinction of the human race. To his credit, Weisman recoils from the prospect of a world without children. However, even with the editorial caveats, ending the book like that gives a bitter aftertaste to the reading experience. It is simply not true that Sam and Aidan aren't worth what they cost. To even hint at it is an affront.
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Having just read Eugenics and Other Evils by G.K. Chesterton with my biochemistry class, I'm struck by how easy it is to move from a scientific view of the world to a misanthropic one. How quickly the scientific society of turn-of-the-century Germany becomes the expansionist society of World Wars I and II. A book like Weisman's does a wonderful job of detailing the science, bit by bit, of what would happen to our world and our works if we all just suddenly left. But it doesn't do a good job of allowing for the innovation and joy that these extra humans can provide. It's not just about comsumption, but also production. Some parts of our world are indeed spinning off into environmental oblivion, let's find them and stop them. But I would prefer not to be made to feel guilty for having two wonderful children and wanting more! G.K. Chesterton's Christian liberalism is a strong antidote to the general tide of scientific reductionist pessimism. We can't ignore the science, but we must infuse it with the joy (even joy in debating issues!) of good ol' GKC.
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Another point of comparison is to I Am Legend starring Will Smith. In some ways a fancy, glossy, all-too-typical zombie movie (hey, look, the zombies move FAST now, doesn't that change EVERYTHING?!), but not too gross or pessimistic. There's some happiness to the ending, I'll say (without saying what it is). But because of that it doesn't feel like a true zombie movie. In a movie like 28 Weeks Later, the values of love and compassion are shown to be signs of weakness and things that cause whole societies to collapse. That is precisely what I do not like about zombie movies. Because I Am Legend didn't have that, it really was an action movie and a chance for Will Smith to emote a bit, and for special-effects designers to create an overgrown New York City (although, according to Weisman, I think it's not overgrown enough for three years of abandonment). For those purposes it was adequate.
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The question comes to, is a movie like, say, No Country for Old Men essentially a violent, pessimistic zombie-movie-like philosophy in modern Western garb, or is it something else? Some people say the former, but I found a lot of good to come from it, after digesting it and thinking about it a lot. But that's probably another post, and I have some comments over at "Pastoral Musings from Rain City" that address that issue.
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The End of the World sure is entertaining.
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