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The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear?
- scooke 2y agoThe perspective of the entire article is confused. Abandonment doesn't overcome and infuse something. It's not an action; it is a state. And what happens TO nature? No, what does nature DO when humanity stops what it does to nature. Réclamation, from the proper perspective; abandonment is from the human perspective.
- pololeono 2y agoIt is all about aesthetics. Humanity is also part of nature.
- falcor84 2y agoAs I understand it, it's not about aesthetics per-se, but rather that "nature" is a semantic concept defined by us humans for anything that is outside of the human sphere - i.e. something is "natural" or "out in nature" or "nature's way" if it's what would have been if humans hadn't been involved.
- g8oz 2y agoIn the manner of an algal bloom, yes.
- jpcom 2y agoCovid was a great example of how the natural world returns to harmony when human antagonism via noise/sound pollution and so forth is suddenly halted. I think a lot of dolphins in the sea rejoiced.
- Neil44 2y agoThe article actually argues that the idea that nature finds lovely balances if we just get out of the way is not correct. A lot of what we view as stable ecosystems are stable because of our management and influence over millennia. Nature on it's own is not a thing, there are no checks and balances, no intention, no morality. The quote from the article is that nature does not organise it's self into neat parables.
- Der_Einzige 2y agoThis is called the "baseline" problem among conservationists.
- benchmarkist 2y agoWhy is it a problem? It's not like people are somehow special. We eat and shit like every other mammal but without us the water and land would not be full of synthetic chemicals and plastics. Seems very obvious to me that human industries change the baseline to a polluted state vs what it would have been without industrial activities. But even without industrial activity the historical record is very clear on the effect that human populations have on the surrounding flora and fauna.
- oblio 2y agoWell, if you want to be optimistic, I think we got coal from lignin/wood being uneatable for hundreds of millions of years (I think). So wood would stack up, not rot, get covered by dirt and turned into coal due to physical processes, not biological ones. So coal deposits of the existing magnitudes couldn't be created now.
- benchmarkist 2y agoI am very optimistic. I don't remember where I read it but whatever remains after the current industrial civilization will not have access to the energy resources necessary for reindustrialization. Might have been Derrick Jensen but I can't remember which book exactly.
- shiroiushi 2y agoI have no idea what book might have first explored this idea, but it's a very common theme online whenever this type of discussion comes up: someone will inevitably point out that any post-human-extinction civilization that might evolve on Earth won't have such easy access to energy as we've had.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- ashoeafoot 2y agoWe are part of the natural world and your natural world is a place of constant savagery.
- cjs_ac 2y ago> As populations move and shrink, people are leaving long-occupied places behind. Often they leave everything in place, ready for a return that never comes. In Tyurkmen, Christmas baubles still hang from the curtain rails in empty houses, slowly being wrapped by spiders. In one abandoned home, a porcelain cabinet lay inside a crater of rotted floorboards, plates still stacked above a spare packet of nappies for a visiting grandchild. Occasionally, abandonment happens all at once, when a legal ruling or evacuation sends people scuttling. But mostly, it is haphazard, creeping, unplanned. People just go. This always confuses me. If I were abandoning my home of my own volition, I'd take my possessions with me.
- analog31 2y agoEvery time I've moved, it involved getting rid of piles of stuff. And my next move will probably be a downsize. I'm already on a mission to get rid of X cubic foot of stuff per year. After helping my mom downsize, I've lost my nostalgia for keeping old stuff around. And my kids want none of it -- they don't know if they will ever own a house, or necessarily what country they'll even live in. And of course I wonder why stuff piles up. The reasons include laziness and probably a mild hoarding instinct.
- ralph84 2y agoEventually we all die and our heirs if we have any tend to value our possessions closer to the market rate ($0) than we do.
- Macha 2y agoChristmas decorations and nappies both strike me as the sort of thing that would get left behind, they're pretty poor in the value/space tradeoff, not to mention that a lot of these houses were left behind when elderly people died. It's not uncommon for elderly people to have stuff they accumulated over the years, it would not surprise me if there's christmas decorations that have been unused for decades in my grandmother's attic, or nappies that were once for grandchildren that are now adults. In a country where the population is growing, this stuff just gets dumped as the heirs clear out the house to sell, but what are these houses in the middle of nowhere with infrastructure that has crumbled away worth?
- Rygian 2y agoLife After People is a TV show that covers some answers to the title, from several points of view.
- wmwmwm 2y agoBook recommendation for The World Without Us which explores what might happen if humans vanished overnight: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us
- Animats 2y agoWikipedia has a list of ghost towns in the United States.[1] Most rural towns were built to serve surrounding farms and ranches. As farming became less labor-intensive, the need for those towns went away, and the towns slowly died. See "Depopulation of the Great Plains"[2] It's interesting to note that the depopulated area is the best part of the US for wind power. That could work out OK. Mining towns die when the resource is exhausted. They go fast. Japan, where the population is rapidly declining, has a large number of empty rural towns. There's an incentive program to get young people to move there, but not many are interested. Because Japan's infrastructure is centrally funded, much of the infrastructure is still maintained in areas with very few people. Russia has a declining population and entire abandoned cities. Putin is pushing young people to have kids. There's a "Pregnant at 16" TV show in Russia, which has been re-branded to encourage pregnancy.[3] The countries that are above breakeven (2.1 children per woman) are all in Africa or are dominated by religions which oppress women. And poor.[4] "Peak baby" was in 2013 worldwide. There are two futures, both bad. "Keep 'em barefoot and pregnant", or "Will the last one to leave please turn out the lights." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_the_Great_Plai... [3] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/05/as-russia-targets-abortion-and-childfree-propaganda-to-raise-birth-rates-pregnant-at-16-reality-show-rebrands-to-make-motherhood-more-appealing https://meduza.io/en/feature/2024/11/05/as-russia-targets-ab... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
- RestartKernel 2y ago[3] is really interesting. I'm not surprised, but it really feels like history is happening when even the mundane starts to reflect it.
- tokioyoyo 2y agoI don’t think it will work as long as women have access to information and literally anything else to do in life other than making endless babies. I fear there will be a push against women’s freedom of choice, once things become dire enough that can’t be patched with immigration. It’s just a huge opportunity loss if you talk to any young woman, and they’re obviously right. There is no tangible benefit to have more than two children other than “for the humanity!”.
- AlexDragusin 2y agoThis documentary explores this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11zPNb-MFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11zPNb-MFg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero Aftermath: Population Zero - The World without Humans What would happen if, tomorrow, every single person on Earth simply disappeared? Not dead, simply gone, just like that. A world without people, where city streets are still populated by cars, but no drivers. A world where there is no one to fix bridges or repair broken windows…
- MarkusWandel 2y agoSay what? Wikipedia says it's a Canadian production, Youtube says "not available in your country". I'm in Canada. Edit: It's just that particular link. Searching for the title itself brought up a working one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHoOG4eKzbM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHoOG4eKzbM
- ignoramous 2y agomirror: https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/l11zPNb-MFg https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/l11zPNb-MFg
- pvaldes 2y agoSome years of great success ended by a rust nuclear plant suddenly exploding.
- wongogue 2y agoCheck out the DMZ in Korea and Chernobyl.
- guenthert 2y agoAfaik, the region which is now the DMZ was never industrialized. So this is a very special case with little toxic waste (other than the occasional landmine).
- theendisney 2y agoIt would be cool to plant a food forest. Give it 60-80 years and it might just change into a garden of Eden.
- jandrewrogers 2y agoI have spent time in remote parts of North America that have seen few if any humans in several decades. The thing you notice in that country is that there are a lot of animals and the animals behave differently when they see you than animals almost anywhere else. They’ve never seen a human before, for generations, and so you are a novelty in their environment that they know nothing about. Interestingly, humans (without canids) apparently don’t come across as much of a threat by default. I would be approached by curious animals that in any other environment would never allow themselves to be remotely that close to a human. For lack of a better description, these animals also had much more “personality” than the wild animals you see near civilization. Until you’ve seen the actual wilds, it is easy to forget how much of the “wilds” are actually quite zoo-like.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EB-Barrington 2y agoIn remote parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, I saw wild approach closely and then be hand-fed. I had the same thoughts as you - these animals don't behave as expected - it's like they haven't yet learned that humans can be dangerous.
- MrLeap 2y agoI live out in the country. Not quite "wilds" but it's about a 45 minute drive to the nearest walmart and we drink water out of a well. It's remote enough that only a few cars drive by a month. I've also found that the animals behave differently out here, or appear to anyhow. Maybe it's just there's more sensory room to notice the differences. There's a family of small furry rodents that greet me a few feet away from the porch every morning. Birdsong also has a load of hidden complexity to it I've never noticed. Go outside every day and listen to the songs. There's persistence, modification proposals and consensus reaching among birds over days and weeks. I don't know a thing about birds, but it's clear there's a lot of fascinating stuff happening among them. We have an "armadillo buddy" that lives under the cabin. Clouds of bats swarm between the trees at night and coyotes howl at the moon. There's got to be dozens of rabbits. They'll let you walk right up to them before they run off. Once had to wait for a family of 10 cross the gravel driveway on our way home. Another time there was a large cougar just chilling in the yard. Having never lived in a rural area until my 30's, it's wild how much activity there is and how close it is to us. How much of this is because nature doesn't have to work as hard to survive around our cabin, and how much is just being able to notice it? It's a mix for sure.
- phront 2y agoAfter I watched the old mario bros movie i thought that dinosaurs might have built a civilization but we see no traces of their deeds. It was very sad to think about that.
- briantakita 2y agoHumans can have a positive ecological impact. For example large parts of the Amazon were cultivated forest gardens with biochar used to build the soil. The issue lies with modern consumerism. Where large corporations capture governments & mandate ecological problems. If we get back to our roots of homesteading, growing our own food, managing the health of our soil, we can get back to being a net positive.
- hk1337 2y agoEquilibrium is near.
- 8bitsrule 2y agoOne of the more interesting photography books I've seen is 'The Past from Above' by Georg Gerster. 2005, ISBN 0-89236-817-9. Hundreds of aerial shots of long-abandoned archeological sites.
- retrac 2y agoThere's a section of rail line between Senneterre, QC and Cochrane, ON in north-central Canada constructed as part of a quixotic federal project a century ago to link the grain-growing praries with an Atlantic port. It was barely ever used and then abandoned in the 1990s. It's the very fringe of the interface where North American industrial civilization reached, and has since rolled back. It's amazing how completely nature has swallowed everything back up. The bridges still stand but they won't in another thirty years or so. Even the railbed constructed to high quality with packed stone dust has trees growing out of it again. I've explored some of the route and I was reminded of who were the great engineers here before humans - beavers completely transform landscapes. They've dammed every causeway along the route, which only further accelerates the erosion. They've flooded a couple rail stops and old logging villages I had hoped to check out. Before long you'll have to know exactly what to look for to even find the line.
- btbuildem 2y agoThat is not a place one visits on a whim, wow!
- black_13 2y ago[dead]