A world without people

There are an increasing number of commentators who believe that the planet would be better off without the presence of human beings on it. The current issue of New Scientist goes one step further to speculate what it might look like.

The premise of the article is that human beings disappear overnight. 'The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,' says a conservation biologist from California. Nature would be able to reclaim the fields and pastures, and make new habitats in deserted buildings. 'Light pollution' would disappear from the skies. Forests would return to their natural state. Nuclear reactors might catch fire or explode, but even there ecosystems would thrive. Strangely, it's not all good news for nature. Some ecosystems have thrived in the presence of human activity and might fail if we were to disappear.

In terms of leaving a legacy, however, the mark of mankind will be pretty shortlived in the great scheme of things. As the article concludes: 'The humbling - and perversely comforting - reality is that the Earth will forget us remarkably quickly.' What would be more accurate is that without the presence of an intelligent lifeform, the Earth would be a pointless rock flying through space.

What is remarkable is that the producers of Britain's most widely read science magazine, who should be celebrating the increasing capacity of human beings to understand and shape the world, have so little regard for humanity's interests. Instead, they seem to dismiss the great progress we have made in conquering the problems that nature confronts us with, prefering to fantasise about our demise. While environmentalists speculate about humanity destroying itself through 'ecocide', it is the increasingly fashionable desire to dismiss our existence as pointless which is more likely to herald disaster.

Imagine Earth without people, New Scientist, 12 October 2006