Book: The World Without Us

Alan Weisman wrote:

Herring and shad have returned to the Hudson, though they spent some generations adjusting to radioactivity trickling out of Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, 35 miles north of Times Square, after its reinforced concrete succumbed.  Missing, however, are nearly all fauna adapted to us.  The seemingly invincible cockroach, a tropical import, long ago froze in unseated apartment buildings.  Without garbage, rats starved or became lunch for the raptors nesting in burnt-out skyscrapers.

What?  No rats???  No cockroaches????

Maybe without people.

With people, the cockroaches are intimidating, and the rats get big enough to outweigh the cats.

Finally finished this book yesterday.  I don't recommend it.

Each chapter is a different focus -- there's one on what would happen to nuclear power plants without maintenance, one on ocean pollutants, one on ozone and airborne pollutants, the rainforest, the cities, underground stuff, etc.  It is very thorough and very tedious.  Yeah okay we get it -- some plastics and PCBs will take millions of years to degrade.  Other stuff -- mainly forests -- will begin to recover rather quickly.

Mankind is a scourge, we get it.

Kind of a "Silent Spring" for 2010.