Books of the Noughties Part II

In the film, The Matrix, one of the sentient robot type thingies, Agent Smith if I remember correctly, captures the Keanu Reeves character and proceeds to belittle his humanity and beat the slow-mo shit out of him. Whilst doing so he delivers the following speech: "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.".

After reading Alan Weisman's discomforting book, The World Without Us, I reckon Agent Smith could be on to something here. Weisman's book, as the title suggests, begins with the deceptively simple premise of imagining a world that is suddenly devoid of humans. Abruptly shorn of you, me and everybody we know, the book describes what our legacy to the planet would be. It begins with the cute - woodlands and animals reclaiming the cities; and ends with the apocalyptic; runaway explosions at various untended oil refineries and chemical plants unleashing such a huge toxic maelstrom that it could potentially wipe out all known life forms. Yet, by outlining such possibilities, the book also provides much needed clarity about both what needs to be done, and perhaps more importantly, can be done, to avoid such a future.