TennViews Blog Roundup
Posted by Kevin

All the best in Tennessee liberal writing can be found here.

January 14th, 2008 | General | no comments

Book Review: The World Without Us
Posted by Kevin

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is a remarkable book. Ostensibly, it is about what would happen if human being were removed from the planet in some sudden and total apocalypse (imagine, Weisman suggests, that the believers in the Rapture or in alien kidnappers are right). And that tale is fascinating. Weisman has done an enormous amount of research, talking to everyone from New York City subway engineers to insect experts to world renowned chemists. He weaves that research into haunting and amusing tales of decay and destruction. He takes the reader through the gradual destruction of their homes and the more spectacular destruction of New York City. He chronicles the attempts of large game, nearly extinct now, to re-colonize the suddenly human-less Earth and t sad fate of cockroaches who have followed humans too far north. The vignettes are well told, even moving on occasion, but they are not the point of the book; the research they are based upon is.

Weisman spends most of the book taking us through the research that lead to each chapter’s tale of a person-less world and that research is the real point of his book. Weisman isn’t really interested in the end of the human world, he is interested in preventing that end. The chapter on which African large animals can survive the end of humans is actually about the effect human settlement patterns are having on African wildlife. The chapter on what would and would not decay quickly without human care is actually about the enormous waste that modern industrial society produces. The chapter on how plastics will affect marine life and bacterial evolution is actually about how humans have rushed headlong into changes, the impact of which they don’t come close to understanding. Because the book touches every continent and almost every aspect of modern industrial civilization, Weisman is able to cover almost every aspect of environmental degradation, including those that receive almost no media attention despite their importance. Because the research is weaved into a mystery — what would happen if humans disappear — the tone of the book never approaches stridency or fear-mongering. Instead, it is matter of fact and curious and brings the reader along to its conclusions gently, even subtly.

Weisman’s conclusion is the only area of the book that falters. His proposed solution may be logically compelling, but it is not practical in anything like a reasonable timeframe using anything like reasonable methods. There is no doubt that Weisman suspects as such and so the reader is left with the nagging, depressing suspicion that Weisman doesn’t have any other alternatives to offer. But that is a minor flaw in an otherwise extraordinary book. Weisman has written an environmental call to arms that is literary, engaging, curious, and serious without being strident. The World Without Us is perhaps the best environmental book of the last several years and I strongly recommend it.

January 14th, 2008 | General, Reviews, Books | 3 comments

The Downside of a Clinton Nomination
Posted by tgirsch

Hilzoy has a good post up on why Clinton winning the Democratic nomination could represent a missed opportunity for the Democratic party (and for progressives in general). Go forth and read.

January 14th, 2008 | Politics | no comments