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Metro World News — July 2020
Interview. The pandemic declared due to the spread of COVID-19 has made some people think that we might not inhabit the Earth forever. But how could humanity disappear? How would our planet evolve without humans? Would the Earth be better without us? Metro talked with Alan Weisman, American journalist and author of ‘A World Without Us,’ who answered all these questions. Daniel Casillas,
Metro World News
Tell about your book. What motivated you to describe the Earth without humans? —I didn’t write it because I want a world without humans, I want a world with us. Obviously what we’re doing now doesn’t work, we’re nailing our own destiny to our impact which is completely changing the global ecosystem. I wanted the reader, when reading my book, and seeing how beautiful nature can flourish if we give it a break, to think about how beautiful this is. And to question whether there is a way for us to become part of that landscape, but this time in balance and harmony with nature. How could humans disappear? —We humans will definitely disappear because all species become extinct sooner or later, just as all human beings die. A large animal like us may last a few thousand or millions of years before it starts to stagnate or have problems coping with its environment. We know that in history, human beings have gone through some catastrophes either for environmental reasons or an epidemic such as the one we suffer today. And there are were no more than 10 thousand human beings left alive, but gradually society returned. What do you think about the current health emergency? —Nature will not sooner or later continue to allow the imbalance generated by humans. This pandemic is teaching us how nature works and this will not be the last one, there will be more and more. But if we handle the situation correctly there is still time, listening to our scientists, our doctors and not to the idiot politicians we have. What other dangers humanity faces today? —We are now entering a time when no human being has ever seen and that is a concentration of almost 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. The last time the same rate occurred, the seas were almost 30 meters higher than they are now. The average temperature is going to change our ecosystems in ways that we have never experienced in the history of our species. We don’t know yet if we can adapt or if we can find a wonderful, magical or technological way to save ourselves from the situation. There are several people who are trying, but nature is really in charge. So far, we are making the situation worse instead of better. What could happen if humans become extinct? —Part of what I described in that book in 2007 would have to be modified today a little bit because we have already increased the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I proposed in the book, by coincidence, that the reader should imagine that a virus that specifically attacks human beings would finish with us leaving the rest of the world intact and there were two questions. How long would it take for nature to erase not only us but our traces on the Earth? And how long would it take to finish with our buildings, city, infrastructure, everything, and go back to being all wild? But the other question is what would we leave behind that would continue to influence the world even if we were not there. What could happen to the cities? —I interviewed hundreds of people, scientists, engineers,
Opinion. According to Alan Weisman, humans will definitely disappear because ‘all species become extinct sooner or later.’ / ISTOCK
What would the Earth be like without humans? biologists, ecologists and they explained that without maintenance, our cities would be finished in less time than we could think. I gave the example of New York, where there is a subway, but the subway is underneath an island where, before the arrival of the Europeans, it was a place with hills and had many rivers, swamps, so a lot of waterfalls. But the engineers who made the map of what is now Manhattan crushed all the hills and buried all the rivers, but that does not mean that there is no longer water, on the contrary, it continues to rain. In short, at a time when there were no humans to maintain the New York Subway, it would be flooded, because it currently has over 80 pumps working 24 hours a day to raise the water from the Subway and dump it into the sea. Obviously there are some things that are going to hold out longer, that’s why we have ruins or archaeological sites, but nature is going to move us in a short time.
“Nature returns and flourishes, even if it takes millions of years, in a more surprising and beautiful way than before. And that is what is going to happen in this world, even with all the damage and scars that we humans are going to leave,”
What about nuclear plants? —Something that we are going to leave and will be worrying for the future are the more than 440 nuclear plants in the world, that without continuous maintenance are going to melt or explode or cause a radioactive fire and the radiation. But the world is going to adapt, as happened at Chernobyl, where nature has already reoccupied the affected area.
ful way than before and that is what is going to happen in this world, even with all the damage and scars that we humans are going to leave here on Earth. Nature is going to recover.
Tell about life on the Earth without humans. —Life is a wonder because whatever happens in this world, life always comes back. The world has suffered five huge extinctions, on three occasions they wiped out more than 90 per cent of the species. I don’t know if we are going to wipe out so many species ourselves, but we are going to a very strong extinction. But each time nature returns and flourishes, even if it takes millions of years, in a more surprising and beauti-
Will Earth be a ‘better’ planet without us? —Many people ask me if I consider humans to be a virus on the planet or a species of cancer and my personal opinion, given the scientific facts, is that nature is very unbiased about its species. Every species that lives on Earth impacts it, of course you have never seen a species like ours that can start a huge extinction; however, I, being a homo sapiens, do not want my species to disappear. We have caused a lot of damage
ALAN WEISMAN, American journalist and author of ‘A World Without Us.’
to this planet, but we have also added a lot of beauty: we make music, we create art, and love is so beautiful. What has impacted our world the most is that in just one century we humans have quadrupled, no large species in the world has grown so fast and that happened because of two inventions: modern medicine and modern agriculture that allows more plants to grow than nature could ever achieve. That, along with our technology that is based on concentrated energy that comes from fuels, from nuclear and solar energy, makes our impact so concentrated that it has become an imbalance. Is there a way to balance between humans and nature? If we could return to a balance with nature, I have nothing against the presence of humans here on Earth. Before the commercialization of synthetic nitrogen to speed up agriculture we were 2 billion people and we all lived more or less organically. There were only two billion of us, which means that there was more room for other beings and we were not destroying their habitats, which is why many are becoming extinct. If we were a quarter of the population that we are today there would be a balance that would not really lead to our extinction and neither would they. So, there is a space for human beings on this Earth, the problem is that we have passed the barrier and we are occupying the spaces of other beings, which has a double impact: that we are taking out with them and at the same time we are being affected by their viruses.