I do not consider myself an extreme environmentalist. However, I have always felt the need to try to protect the world that we live in, it is the only one we have. I try to not use plastic bags, I'd walk more and drive less if I didn't live in the middle of nowhere. I'm concerned about the way we carelessly treat our nuclear waste, our daily waste, and the animals that share this planet with us, mostly because I feel that we must have a positive symbiotic relationship with the world around us it is what gives us life. I get frustrated that it took 11 years before the city I live in decided to get a recycling program in place. I see the devastation to the mountains around me all in the cause of road building, mining and subdivisions, yet I don't know what to do about it. If I didn't already feel this way, reading this book would have made me. Now I feel the need to protect this planet more than ever and yet I still don't know what to do.

The World Without Us, starts out relatively sedate as it goes in to describing how nature would take back the house I live in or the city that I inhabit, if all human life suddenly disappeared in fell swoop. After that the more I read the more appalled I became. I didn't realize what happens to plastic, even the so called biodegradable kind. I didn't know that it doesn't degrade but becomes ever smaller and generally no matter what always seems to be drawn to sea and ocean becoming food for the fish that live there, for the fish that we eat, killing them because they can't digest what they thought was krill or plankton or whatever it is that they eat. I didn't realize that there are huge swirling garbage whirlpools trapped in the middle of the oceans. I knew that nuclear waste was bad, but never put much thought into how much of it is being created and the damage even so called "safe" disposal can do especially since radioactive waste has long long lifetimes. I didn't realize that our buildings and electrical wires kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year. While I don't agree with groups that advocate the gradual voluntary suicide of whole human race to save the planet, I do feel more inclined to think before I act, think before I vote, think before I buy, think before I throw away about how what I'm doing endangers the world that I live in, that gives me life and sustains me. This book was a wake up call and I would recommend it to everyone that calls Earth their home. Maybe if we all cared a little bit more about her, we could save her, protect her and live in harmony with her. I love the last line of the book. It is in the acknowledgements section. "Without us, Earth will abide and continue; without her, however, we we could not even be."