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After We Are Gone: If humans were evacuated, the Earth would flourish
Newsweek ^ | 7/14/7 | Jerry Adler

Posted on 07/16/2007 6:05:58 AM PDT by ZGuy

The Second Coming may be the most widely anticipated apocalypse ever, but Environmentalists have their own eschatology—a vision of a world not consumed by holy fire but returned to ecological balance by the removal of the most disruptive species in history. That, of course, would be us. There's even a group trying to bring it about, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose Web site calls on people to stop having children altogether. And now the journalist Alan Weisman has produced "The World Without Us," which conjures up a future something like ... well, like the area around Chernobyl—just forests that have begun reclaiming fields and towns, home to birds, deer, wild boar and moose.

Weisman's intriguing thought experiment is to ask what would happen if the rest of the Earth was similarly 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 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. Lightning-caused fires would blow out the windows in skyscrapers.

Much of the world would come to resemble ... well, the Korean demilitarized zone, where no one has set foot for more than half a century, now a mecca for Korean bird watchers.

Sound appealing? Well, it did to Weisman, too, when he began work on the book four years ago. And "four out of five" of the people he's told about it, he estimates, thought the idea sounded wonderful.

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: antihumanism; environmentalism; one; prolife; religiousleft
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1 posted on 07/16/2007 6:06:00 AM PDT by ZGuy
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To: ZGuy

Without us, kudzu would take over the world and choke it to death.


2 posted on 07/16/2007 6:07:20 AM PDT by Nabber
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To: ZGuy
And "four out of five" of the people he's told about it, he estimates, thought the idea sounded wonderful.

I invite such people to do us all a favor and kill themselves.

3 posted on 07/16/2007 6:08:48 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Progressives like to keep doing the things that didn't work in the past.)
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To: ZGuy
How would those crackpots know how the world would be withput man, they won’t be here to see it. Just more assumptions from a group of Morons.


4 posted on 07/16/2007 6:09:38 AM PDT by darkwing104 (Let's get dangerous)
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To: Nabber

Looking at their website, I’ve seen that big V on the planet before. It involved aliens who wanted to eat us.
These folks are prrof that man is descended from lemmings
( 85% DNA compatability)


5 posted on 07/16/2007 6:10:15 AM PDT by Waverunner ( "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire)
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To: ZGuy

When the Sun becomes a Red Giant, The entire Earth and everything on it will become nothing but burned, charred cinder. Everything that ever existed on it live or dead will be gone, and there is absolutely NOTHING that can stop it. Tell that to you enviro-whackos and make their day.


6 posted on 07/16/2007 6:12:24 AM PDT by Red Badger (No wonder Mexico is so filthy. Everybody who does cleaning jobs is HERE!.......)
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To: ZGuy
...the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement,...

Sounds great!

You go first.

7 posted on 07/16/2007 6:12:37 AM PDT by HHFi
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To: ZGuy
So, when do these whining liberal Marxists enviro wackos going to kill themselves to save the earth. I suggest they all meet on the Capital Mall on Earth Day and commit mass suicide and start the depopulation of the earth off right. Put your life where your mouths are. Be the first ones on the block to have your cremated body sent back to dust for the sake of the earth. Do it. PLEASE!!!
8 posted on 07/16/2007 6:13:02 AM PDT by RetiredArmy (Jorge Bush & his Marxist's Dim friends are enemies of the Republic with their amnesty Bill.)
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To: ZGuy

Self-loathing must be some kind of tenet in the environmentalists religion.


9 posted on 07/16/2007 6:13:11 AM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Jesus loves you, Allah wants you dead)
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To: All

I saw this movie, but I didn’t like the ending.


10 posted on 07/16/2007 6:13:30 AM PDT by BipolarBob (Yes I backed over the vampire, but I swear I didn't see it in my rear view mirror.)
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To: darkwing104

It’s actually a pretty interesting book. Author’s politics aside, the book explores the ways in which humans constantly maintain urban environments. Without humans and our technology New York, for example, would be a radically different place...


11 posted on 07/16/2007 6:13:31 AM PDT by Will_Zurmacht
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To: ZGuy
killing them with a virus that spares the rest of the biosphere

Didn't Tom Clancy write a novel based on this? I'd watch these guys. They're wacko enough to try this.

12 posted on 07/16/2007 6:14:51 AM PDT by neodad (USS Vincennes (CG-49) Freedom's Fortress)
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To: ZGuy

I was wondering when the environmentalists would get to this point. A little sooner than I thought. I agree with earlier posters... You First, Environmentalists.


13 posted on 07/16/2007 6:15:31 AM PDT by Mach5
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To: RAPTURE
"Come up here..." (Rev 4:1)

14 posted on 07/16/2007 6:16:59 AM PDT by evets (Beer)
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To: ZGuy
This, says Weisman—who is 60, and childless after the death of his only daughter—would stabilize the human population by the end of the century at about 1.6 billion, approximately where it was in 1900.

The senile old fool needs some stabilizing of his own thought processes.

15 posted on 07/16/2007 6:17:23 AM PDT by rabscuttle385 (Sic Semper Tyrannis * U.Va. Engineering '09 * Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Democrat * Fred in 2008)
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To: ZGuy

I bet the idiot sits in AC while he writes too. Its not like he’s using his two feet to walk to the store to buy his toilet paper either.
What an idiot.


16 posted on 07/16/2007 6:17:36 AM PDT by Havok (I like meat, guns, and comic books. Am I a bad conservative?)
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To: ZGuy

Rainbow Six.


17 posted on 07/16/2007 6:19:15 AM PDT by Rb ver. 2.0 (eHarmony reject)
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To: Rb ver. 2.0
You got rejected by eHarmony? How does that happen?
18 posted on 07/16/2007 6:21:27 AM PDT by Fawn
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To: neodad

That’s so “moonraker”...


19 posted on 07/16/2007 6:22:05 AM PDT by MrB (You can't reason people out of a position that they didn't use reason to get into in the first place)
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To: Nabber

“Without us, kudzu would take over the world and choke it to death.”

In NH it is BITTERSWEET vine. When I moved in 12 years ago it was all over my property. I cut and spray CHEMICALS every year. ORTHO Brush BE GONE and Triox work best.

According to my 70 year old neighbor, the people across the road had a Christmas wreath they left on the door for 6 months, 30 years ago. The birds ate the berries and spread them throughout the neighborhood. We have been battling it ever since. It climbs up trees, or anything else, and eventually kills the tree.


20 posted on 07/16/2007 6:22:54 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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