Alan Weisman

Alan Weisman challenged himself to write a book about the global environmental crisis that would be read by people who usually avoid topics they consider depressing and scary. He simply imagined what we’d leave behind if we were to suddenly vanish – victims, say of a Homo sapiens-specific virus that killed us off but left everything else intact. Then he travelled the globe to learn from scientists, knowledgeable locals, and other experts how the rest of nature would respond to our absence – and how long it would take before the traces of our presence and our environmental impact would be erased. Its underlying principles aren’t theoretical, but ecological. In his presentation, Weisman will explain how contemplating a world without us helps us to answer the real question broached by The World Without Us: How can we continue to have a world with us?

Conference