I've just finished 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman, and boy can I tell you, I am surprised that my wrists have not been sliced to ribbons.
image courtesy of: theworldsbestever.com
Good book though.
It was lent to me by a friend who I happened to be chatting with while I was drunk one evening. She happened to remember that I said something about how wonderful it would be to read this book she owned and brought it over at least 2 months later. It really made my day when she lent it to me. But that point is irrelevant. If I wanted to talk about things that made me happy this post would include more pictures of kittens.
image courtesy of: kitten-pictures.com
It basically discusses what, in theory, would happen to Earth if humans all just disappeared one day. Within a week the city of New York would be flooded, the Panama Canal would collapse, and in time huge explosions from oil refineries would erupt. It would be chaos! In ten thousand years the Earth might return to it's state of pre-human rape....almost.
What I really took away from this book is that humans screwed the world up and plastic is a bad bad thing. In today's modern age we couldn't do without it in some way shape or form, but its really nasty stuff. That fact is nothing new though, but nothing on the planet eats it, and even if you think it finally broke down and disappeared you're wrong, it just broke down to a point where microorganisms have to deal with it. Maybe some day we'll breed plastic eating bacteria, which we are in sore need of, to clean up the oceans. Did you know that there is a spot in the Pacific Ocean where all the plastic refuse just floats and collects? Its disgusting and really really depressing.
Also, forget about the coral reefs. They're fucked. End of story.
I don't really believe in most recycling, especially plastic, because we burn more fuels breaking it down and trying to reuse it than we do making new plastic. But bear in mind there are three parts to recycling: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The first two are by far the best thing you could do. If you reduce how much waste you make, there's that much less going into landfills. If you reuse you take even more trash out of the system (now though, old plastic containers give you cancer, we all suspected it, scientists now are just confirming it). But recycling is not a viable plan. I think we should change gears and repurpose the plastic or something. Rather than break a substance down and remanufacture it, there's got to be something simpler we can do with it.
But anyway, this book was fantastic and gave me a good idea of what kind of world Earth would become if most of all the humans died off. Best of all, like a good book should, it really got me thinking about my actions as a human, how humans could make a better world together, and how we really fucked the planet up big time.
I rate this book:
9/10
I recommend this book for anyone who has ever wondered what the world might really be like without us. It's also a great book for your uptight environmentalist and/or lame PETA friends who you can never figure out what to get for Christmas.
image courtesy of: kentuckyfriedcruelty.com
video of the week: Rebel meets Rebel - Nothin' to Lose
2 comments:
I think I'd like to get my hands on that book.
On the topic of plastics, they are horrible, no doubt, but as you said, the reuse part is very important.
Plastic bags, I save them up for a long time. I try to reuse them when I go shopping but often forget them. But you can donate them to shelters and places that gather food for the less fortunate. This is something I discovered two years ago. I remember last year I donated tons of bags to the ACC students association because they needed them for their student food program thing that they have going on.
PLastic bottles, well, not really sure what to say about those. Try not use them. I wish we'd already switch back to glass.
-Maxwell
Isn't it funny how everyone seems to hold on to plastic bags? They're definitely handy for garbage and stuff, but for some reason they just stack up and before you know it you're swimming in them!
In India they pay people to collect used plastic bags, wash them, and reuse them. If we did that in Canada we'd save millions of bags a day. In Leaf Rapids (where JM is from) they actually banned them.
I think plastic bottles are by far the easiest thing to reuse, but you'll cancer. I remember hearing an interview with some folks on CBC who switched from plastic and paper food containers to glass. They said everything tastes better, and I definitely believe them! Lets you and I start a glass only movement.
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