After We Are Gone

What would happen if the rest of the Earth was evacuated - not by a nuclear holocaust or natural disaster, but by whisking people off in spaceships, or killing them with a virus that spares the rest of the biosphere. In a world with no one to put out fires, repair dams or plow fields, what would become of the immense infrastructure humans have woven across the globe? In a matter of days or weeks, nuclear power plants around the world would boil off their water and melt into vast radioactive lumps. Electrical power would fail, and with it the pumps keeping New York City's subways from flooding; in a few years Lexington Avenue would collapse and eventually turn into a river. Lightening-caused fires would blow out the windows in skyscrapers, and concrete floors would freeze and buckle. A few centuries on, steel bridges would fall victim to rust and the inexorable assault of vegetation taking root in windblown clumps of soot. Masonry structures would last the longest, although the next ice age would wipe them out, at least at the latitude of New York, and bronze sculptures, would be recognizable 10 million years into the future, probably the last recognizable artifacts of our civilization.

And what of the biosphere? Unless global warming has already progressed beyond the point of no return, it would eventually recover much of its diversity and richness. Contrary to widespread belief, cockroaches would not take over the world if there were no one around to step on them: tropical insects, they wouldn't survive their first winter without central heating. Rats and dogs would miss us the most, it seems - the former for our garbage and the latter our protection from bigger predators. Feral cats, on the other hand, would do quite well" there would be plenty of birds for them to eat. Elephants would once again have the run of Africa, and the oceans would be filled with fish as few alive have ever seen them.

Since we are headed inexorably toward and environmental crash anyway, why not get it over cleanly and allow the world to heal?