ThinkingShift

Well, I’ve been a Chief Knowledge Officer. Perhaps I could morph myself into a Chief Sustainability Officer - especially given Patrick Lambe’s rather depressing survey results, which revealed how much organisations invest in their KM initiatives (and Australia doesn’t come out smelling very rosy). So if the life of a knowledge manager is “nasty, brutish and short”, then you could turn your attention to organisational efforts in sustainability (which must surely require some KM input).

Forbes recently highlighted how the new role of Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) is emerging within the corporate echelons. The CSO’s role is to balance the difficulties and opportunities created by climate change. The article suggests that as the world cooks, the CSO might become the most influential corporate position as organisations struggle to identify and embrace the business opportunities that present themselves. So green is a growth opportunity and those that snap up the opportunities will survive in an increasingly complex and environmentally-troubled world.

A sustainable approach to business can produce a healthier bottom line. Better resource use and energy management can lower operational and manufacturing costs and reduce pollution and waste; “green” products, services and technologies can increase revenue; critical resources can be conserved; and a corporation can be seen as environmentally responsible, which boosts the brand and results in positive PR opportunities. A further benefit of course is that pursuing sustainability goals can attract employees who wish to “make a difference”.

Since the 1960s, there has been an organisational role that focuses on the environment but from the perspective of regulatory compliance. The focus is now shifting to this role feeding into strategy, product design, marketing and corporate communications. The CSO is now the bridge between the environment and business. What was once good for the environment was considered bad for business. The CSO role can bridge these opposing forces perhaps.

And what might be the competencies the CSO needs? According to Forbes:

• someone who sees the “big picture” and the long-range trajectory
• a strategist with the ability to rethink organisational structure and recognise levers for change
• someone who’s not afraid to “rock the boat”
• a charismatic person
• a leader with the ability to create consensus and drive change
• needs to be involved in integrating environmental thinking into every layer of the organisation
• needs to create awareness that the role is about creating a better way of doing business, a more sustainable way of doing business
• facilitator and enabler
• someone who is not easily intimidated by corporate bureaucracy
• and I’ll add my own one - a fox terrier who bites the corporate ankle, thrashes around and doesn’t let go until mission accomplished.

Mmmm….so far, sounds a lot like the competencies a KM person requires. A 2006 survey of 25 US companies found that 15 of the CSOs are vice-presidents; 6 are directors; and women fill 9 of the chief environmental positions. But like KM, the position the CSO occupies in the corporate hierarchy says a lot about the value that organisation places on environmental issues.

I seem to remember a lot of CKOs in the early 2000s (myself included) but the KM world is less populated with CKOs these days. So the CSO is probably the new CKO. If the CSO position is a top role in the hierarchy, then there’s some hope of influencing a corporation’s sustainability journey (as with the CKO and the “KM journey”). The CSO will be able to survey the whole corporate ecosystem and identify patterns etc.

I’ll be interested to see if the CSO role becomes popular in Australia. A quick search of Seek didn’t throw up anything and ferreting around Google only showed CSOs in US companies, like Dupont. If you know of any Australian positions, leave a comment.

And what qualifications will a CSO need - legal, government background, science, research and development? The experiences of some US companies sounds a lot like KM again - Owens Corning Inc plucked their CSO from its research department, whilst Home Depot found their CSO lurking in merchandising. KM people come from disparate backgrounds too and are often plucked from the ranks of a company to fill a KM position (and after a stint in KM in my experience, these people are often all too happy to go back from whence they came!). Perhaps we’ll start to see University courses like Graduate Certificate in Sustainability as we see now with KM. There are already educational institutions that offer an MBA in Sustainable Business or who offer a green MBA curriculum.

Well, my career in KM hasn’t been “nasty, brutish and short” since I’ve been in the field since around 1996 or so. But a CSO role sure looks interesting!

In all the stuff I’ve read on global warming and the havoc we’re wreaking on our planet, one thing has always stood out for me. As the planet heats up, exotic diseases or diseases that have been dormant in the darkest parts of the African or Amazonian jungles will burst forth. So I get alarmed when I read about increasing deforestation because forests and undergrowth are often the natural protection against diseases.

Whenever I go to Johannesburg to visit family, I arm myself with malarial prevention. Not that Johannesburg has malaria but just in case (yep, paranoid I know). But it seems that malaria is making a a comeback and is just one of the dire signs I think we need to be aware of. I was thinking of visiting South America, particularly Peru, but maybe not. For 40 years, Peru has been malaria-free but the mosquito-borne disease is making a dramatic comeback. 64,000 cases of malaria have been noted during 2007 alone.

Now, this is not because the world’s mosquito population has suddenly decided to hold its annual convention in Peru. Nope, it’s because of deforestation and climate change. Peru is not trying to eradicate malaria all over again; it’s just desperately trying to control the outbreak.

Off-season rain means that sunlit puddles of water are lying around and provide an ideal breeding ground for mosquito larvae. “The actual malaria problem of the Peruvian Amazon is caused by constant climate changes,” says biologist Carlos Pacheco. But as rainforests crash down due to logging and clearing, mosquitos are moving into new areas where they can feed on humans. The biting rate of mosquitoes in deforested areas is apparently nearly 300 times greater than in virgin forests. Because Peru has been free of malaria for decades, the population is ill-educated on malaria prevention and mosquito nets and medical treatment are not readily available. In an ironic twist, loggers are the main victims of malaria.

If you want to freak yourself out thinking about a future with infectious diseases brought about by climate change, here’s a brief run down:

• plague due to increased rodent populations following heavy rainfalls likely to hit us
• cholera and rodent-borne hantavirus
• Murray Valley encephalitis and Ross River virus in Australia
• meningitis epidemics
• Guinea worm and Chagas’ disease
• dengue or breakbone fever
• yellow fever
• Lyme disease

You get the idea. I remember reading a report a couple of years ago that had me freaked out by Dr Paul Epstein of the Centre for Health and Global Environment in Massachusetts, US. You can read highlights of his study here.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

I’ve been researching into corporate sustainability and have come across some useful resources that I thought I’d share with you. First up, is a new publication by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development - The New Role of Corporate Leadership in Global Development. Check it out here. A key message for business is: “Given the right conditions, the private sector can improve the lives of people in the low-income segment through direct employment, procurement from local suppliers and delivery of affordable products and services.”

Sorry, but having read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, I’m a tad skeptical about this. Seems to me that relentless privatisation just feeds greedy corporations and is creating a gaping wealth divide. So people in the low-income bracket don’t always get a share of the wealth. And will corporations actively worry about improving the lives of people in this income bracket?? I wonder.

The Wall Street Journal has a special issue on the environment. It looks at topics such as public attitudes towards climate change and personal sacrifice; building green and affordable; alternative energies. I also found the United Nations Environment Programme has just published the fourth Global Environment Outlook. Its compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data garnered over two decades. Pretty bad news: the report says that humanity is ravaging the planet so voraciously and so rapidly that future generations will be bequeathed a devoured planet. Earth has experienced five mass extinctions in 450 million years, the latest of which occurred 65 million years ago and the report highlights that a sixth major extinction is under way, this time caused by human behaviour.

Interesting and scary statistics from this report. Here’s a taste.

• climate is changing faster than at any time in the past 500,000 years
• global average temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 Fahrenheit) over the past century and are forecast to rise by 1.8 to four C (3.24-7.2 F) by 2100
• global population is expected to peak at between 8 and 9.7 billion by 2050
• in Africa, land degradation and even desertification are threats; per capita food production has declined by 12% since 1981

The UN report presents four scenarios to the year 2050: “Markets First”, “Policy First”, “Security First”, “Sustainability First”.

Also news about rising sea levels and other disasters related to climate change. 33 cities are predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015 and at least 21 of these cities are highly vulnerable - Dhaka, Bangladesh, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai and Tianjin in China, Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, Mumbai and Kolkata in India, Jakarta, Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan, Lagos, Karachi, Bangkok, New York, Los Angeles.

643 million people or more than one tenth of the world’s population live in low-lying areas at risk of climate change. In descending order, China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines are countries most at risk.

A mixed bag of news really. Some species going kaput, some discovered, some just hanging in there. Let’s start with the discovered bit…kicks the post off with some positive news.

Flying fox exists after all. An unusual species of flying fox was recently discovered on Mindoro island in the Philippines, not long after it was said not to exist. This cute fellow is actually a fruit bat. He’s a pretty big size, has bright orange fur and distinctive white stripes across its brow and jaw. The animal is now known as the Mindoro stripe-faced fruit bat. Source: National Geographic.

Brazilian blue parrot stages comeback. The Lear’s Macaw, a vivid, electric blue-hued parrot, has come back from the brink of extinction with more than 750 birds in the wild counted in a recent survey. This is more than 10 times the number reported in the wild in the late 1980s. The global population of this species was just 70 birds in 1987; in 2003 it was 455, and until the June, 2007 count, the estimated population was 600. This is a very majestic looking bird,with yellow plumes around its beak and eyes. But….. hunting and the illegal pet trade market places this bird under continual threat. Source: Reuters.

Rare cat close to kaput. One of the world’s rarest cats, the Japanese wild cat, is teetering on the verge of extinction. Its habitat is being threatened by hotel development, cars and a deadly frog fungus. The Iriomote cat has been listed as “critically endangered” on the Japanese government’s Red List of threatened species. The wildcat is found only on Iriomote Jima, a tiny, tropical, mountainous island on the southern end of the Ryukyu archipelago, which stretches from Japan to Taiwan. Source: National Geographic.

Pink flamingos may disappear. Bad news. Millions of gloriously elegant pink flamingos may disappear from the shores of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, which is an important breeding ground. An Indian chemical company wants to extract soda ash from the lake and they plan to construct a soda ash plant in the area. The company is Tata Chemicals, part of the giant Tata industrial group of India. Each summer 500,000 of the birds, three-quarters of the world’s breeding population, fly to the lake to nest. Following an environmental impact assessment Tata Chemicals must undertake, let’s hope the flamingos are left in peace. Source: Guardian Unlimited.

Vampire bats go wild. As a result of the South American rainforests being destroyed, the vampire bat is finding meatier victims to sink its teeth into. When the rainforests were intact there was plenty of juicy prey for the bat - tapirs and piglike peccaries for example. But now this dining option is increasingly less, the bats have turned to cattle as rainforest is often cleared for cattle grazing. The bats feed at night and numbers have been on the rise over the last 50 years, a fact attributed to deforestation. And the bats place humans under the risk of rabies. Source: National Geographic.

Okay, this week I admit I’ve been a bit introspective pondering the English language, cemeteries and heroes, so time for a change of pace. I just had a week’s holiday and for once decided to stay at home rather than schlepping overseas. This resulted in time to read and contemplate, hence the posts of the last few days.

So…..today’s post is something pretty interesting to me and anyone interested in global warming-related corporate social responsibility issues. GreenMachines.net has just launched the internet’s first green corporate governance network - a social network with the mission of helping to turn climate-related corporate decision-making into a public process so that the technological and economic power of business corporations is focused on the fight against global warming.

There are four online discussion areas on the network:

• The Whistle: looks at whether particular corporations are violating laws designed to reduce greenhouse gas emission. Whistleblower protection is provided by Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 549 U.S. __ (2007), in which the US Supreme Court gives the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from the tailpipes of new motor vehicles - meaning that the United States Supreme Court has found that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” within the meaning of the Clean Air Act and the Court’s reasoning applies equally to other greenhouse gases. So anyone who thinks a company is violating the Clean Air Act by unlawfully emitting greenhouse gases can report the violation on the network.
• The Long View: an area for discussing carbon footprint-reducing investments that corporations can make to develop or implement carbon dioxide (”CO2″) capture and/or sequestration technologies.
• Value-Added: here the network can share information about the steps a company can take to develop or implement CO2 capturing or sequestering technologies or find information on how to publish a Corporate Sustainability Report.
• Deconstruction Zone: an area to discuss and highlight the accuracy of a company’s Corporate Environmental Responsibility Reports or other green PR.

All four forums are moderated and anyone can join. Under New Posts, I found a whole lot of stuff on court cases involving non-compliant companies; companies that are seen as having the greenest tech brands; what specific companies like Wells Fargo and Chevron are doing around sustainability; and a link to measuring and managing corporate carbon footprints.

Quite timely really given the recent article in The Economist. US economist, Robert Reich’s new book, Supercapitalism, denounces CSR as a dangerous diversion that is undermining democracy. Reich has apparently had a Damascene conversion and following many years of preaching the CSR gospel, now believes that companies cannot be socially responsible and that CSR activitists need to focus on getting Governments to solve social problems. He debunks many CSR arguments and maintains that socially responsible companies are not necessarily more profitable and that many companies are using CSR as a propaganda tool to fool the public into thinking that problems are being addressed.

I suspect a good cat fight will erupt over this book - check out the overview of the book in The Economist article.

I have a sense I’ve just read a seriously important essay - two-part essay actually. I haven’t quite got my head around it yet but for me it articulates some very important notions that I need to reflect on. The author is Curtis White (Prof of English at Illinois State University) and his two-part series appears in Orion Magazine (March/April and May/June 2007 issues). The titles of his two essays are The Idols of Environmentalism and The Ecology of Work.

I’ll do my best to summarise the two essays. I think there are many layers to his writing and insights and I’m just hovering on the surface at the moment. But here goes. Curtis says that environmentalism is failing. Yes, environmentalists are in a battle with “powerful corporate evildoers” but both the environmentalists and the corporations are all locked into the one system - capitalism. All of us (including those desperately trying to save the environment) are mere functionaries of a world designed for the “visible God” of money, profit, wealth generation, power. The vast economic order of capitalism has reduced humans to doing two things: working and consuming. We depend on the market system for our national wealth, our family security and comfort, our jobs, even our sense of identity.

The capitalist meta-narrative “creates a hole in our sense of ourselves…and it leaves us with few alternatives but to try to fill that hole with money and the things money buys. We are not free to dismiss money because we fear that we’d disappear, we’d be nothing at all without it“. And so we are weak and fearful. And whilst we talk about the destruction to the environment, we cannot imagine stepping outside a system on which we so crucially depend. As White says: “Only a weak and fearful society could invest so much desperate energy in protecting activities that are the equivalent of suicide“.

By this, he means that carbon credits for example (as a way of combating global warming) or the Kyoto protocol are simply capitalist schemes that perpetuate the problem. We believe that we can confront a problem that is external to ourselves, when what White believes is that we have lost a sense of awe, that we are spiritually impoverished, and we have lost rich traditions. Now at first I thought this might be fluffy bunny stuff - a call to return to the pre-technology/industrial era in which we all made our own clothes, grew vegetables, danced around fires, lit candles to show us the way, sang around the piano - that sort of stuff. But no, what White is saying I think is more complex than this - he’s saying that we must go beyond environmentalism. We have become so integrated into an order of work that makes us “inhuman” and intolerant (and apathetic) about the destruction going on around us (whether this is of the Earth or violence within society). He is saying that science and the language of science has become our religion over the last 200 or so years and that we must “...return to our oldest spiritual convictions: a reverence for creation and a shared commitment to the idea that religion is finally about understanding how to live in faithful relation to what has been given to us in creation“.

Okay let’s pause here: this is not some religious nut rallying against science as the Devil. White says that there are three important questions we must ask ourselves as these will ultimately decide our human existence and will establish the organising principle in a world beyond environmentalism:

• What does it mean to be a human being?
• What is my relation to other human beings?
• What is my relation to Being as such, the ongoing miracle that there is something rather than nothing?

If our answer to the first question is that we’re all here to have a jolly good party and pursue wealth and happiness; and if the answer to the second question is we merely have an economic relationship; and if our relation to the world is only to “resources” that we can exploit for profit - well, then we’re all stuffed but should be able to live comfortably in this capitalist world because we expect nothing more or better.

But if we answer that there should be a greater sense of self-worth in being a human; that there should be more justice in our relationships with others; and more reverence for simply being alive in a world surrounded by the beauty of Nature - then we must either “live in bad faith” with capitalism or begin to describe a future that is radically different from our current existence and one that returns us to our nobility.

What really stopped me in my tracks with his essays was his description of two things: we are living in the early stages of an era of consequences. Entrepreneurial freedom leaves behind a culture that accumulates - wealth, success, power. It makes cheap things that don’t last or destructive things that snuff us out. But the consequences of capitalism’s activities are climate change, species extinction, human population collapse. The second thing that I thought interesting was his description of green capitalism - the imperatives of environmentalism are not part of capitalism’s reasoning. “Capitalism can think profit, but it can’t think nature“. Green capitalism - “buy organic”, “go green” - is the marketing arm of capitalism. It’s entrepreneurialism without conscience. White says that capitalism is not sustainable and that it’s a system intent on its own death. But he’s not some left-over Communist calling for a return to the good old days of the Cold War. He is, however, someone who is willing to question capitalism, which is demonstrating intellectual conscience.

Our desire to protect capitalism means that environmentalism has also abandoned humans - to the market economy - and our reliance on scientific language, he believes, is a way of acknowledging the superiority of the capitalist/scientific meta-narrative eg using words like ecology, ecosystem, habitat. One of White’s key insights is this:

“In accepting science as our primary weapon against environmental destruction, we have also had to accept science’s contempt for religion and the spiritual….Environmentalism…should look to create a common language of care (a reverence for and commitment to the astonishing fact of Being) through which it could begin to create alternative principles by which we might live“.

But are we able to willingly give up a system within which we’ve become comfortable (from an economic perspective not a spiritual perspective)? White believes “We are not ready. Not yet, at least“. Really, you have to read these essays. They will make you stop and think.

An interesting report has been released by Goldman Sachs, which highlights how an increasing number of business leaders view corporate social responsibility as a way to build trust with stakeholders, compete successfully, build business value and deliver higher stock prices. The report examined 6 industry sectors - energy, mining, steel, food, beverages, and media - and showed that companies in these sectors who were considered leaders in implementing environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies have outperformed the general stock market by 25% since August 2005. And 72% of these companies have outperformed their peers over the same period. You can download the report from the United Nations Global Compact site.

A complementary survey carried out by McKinsey & Co has found that CEOs are now listening to the call for increased environmental, social and governance strategies. 90% of CEOs surveyed say they are focusing more on ESG than 5 years ago. 72% of CEOs believe that corporate responsibility should be fully embedded in strategy and operations, but only 50% think their firms are actively doing so. You can can download the McKinsey survey from the UN Global Compact site too.

Whilst there is no global legal responsibility (yet) for companies to issue sustainability reports, it’s good to see that a number of companies are responding to internal and external demands to be transparent about their business activities.

I also found another report from KPMG and the Global Reporting Initiative (NGO started in 2000) very useful. The publication analysed sustainability reports published in 2006 by 50 leading companies and found that there were some surprising business opportunities from climate change, mostly in carbon credits.

Australia’s Prime Minister is yet to put his autograph on the Kyoto Protocol but at least the Federal Government is smart enough to figure out that wildlife on the world’s driest continent is going to have a pretty rough time as the planet heats up. Australian State and Federal Governments have agreed (a shock in itself really) to create a 2,800 kilometre wildlife corridor according to a piece in Reuters.

The entire East Coast of Australia - from the Australian Alps (south-eastern Australia) to the tropical north - will link national parks, state forests and Government land. Clearly, there’s going to have to be some snappy negotiation with private landowners who might be in the path of the proposed corridor. Not sure either how the animals and plants will find this magical corridor, but presumably as the Land Down Under sizzles under temperatures rising by up to 6.7 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2080, the preserved areas will function as protective ecosystems.

As one of the scientists involved in the proposal said: “The effects of climate change will likely to be less severe in systems that have some resilience and that we haven’t gone in and buggered-up”.

A thumbs up to the Australian Government for this initiative!

And in related news from National Geographic: the heat is off the sun. A favourite argument of those denying climate change has been that cyclical changes in solar activity have periodically resulted in warmer periods throughout history. The beginning of the 20th Century, particularly the 1930s, experienced warmer temperatures. But that trend reversed after 1985 and cannot explain the rapidly increasing temperatures the world is facing. As one climate scientist quipped:

“Think of the sun as a criminal suspect who has a long record, but a cast iron alibi for the latest crime…..And meanwhile, the fingerprints of CO2 are all over the murder weapon”.

Well, at the risk of getting savaged again on one of those social networking sites, today’s post highlights climate friendly companies. And if I’m accused again of being “one of those whining greenies who believe in climate change”, then yep, I admit it - I’m deeply concerned about how we’re damaging the planet, killing off species, stuffing up the climate. So….I was pleased to come across this article, which talks about how companies are getting ranked on global warming from the consumer’s viewpoint.

A new non-profit, Climate Counts, has produced a climate scorecard based on 22 criteria. Companies are graded from 1 to 100 on whether they measure their carbon footprint; how they are reducing their impact on the environment; compliance with legislation; and what they publicly disclose about corporate activities and environmental impact.

Fifty-six companies from North America and the UK have been ranked. So who’s on top and who’s at the bottom? Canon, Nike and Unilever came out shining with scores of 77, 73 and 71 respectively. Amazon.com, Wendy’s, Burger King, Jones Apparel, CBS and Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden) all got zeros. Apple, eBay.com and Levi Strauss also were among 16 companies with scores under 10. Being an Apple fanatic, I was a bit disappointed with Apple’s score (2) - lift your game! even Google is going green with their ambitious plan to team up with Intel and cut the amount of energy computers consume by 2010. Regular ThinkingShift readers will know I’m somewhat obsessed with Google (over privacy concerns) but have to admit that at least they’re trying to do something about carbon emissions :)- Overall, electronics/computer companies scored well: IBM, Toshiba, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard and Sony, Dell, Hitachi, Siemens, Samsung and Nokia were all in double digits.

Companies in the food industry didn’t fare too well: Starbucks ranked highest in this group, with 46, followed by McDonald’s at 22. Yum Brands — which includes Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell — scored a 1.

The climate scorecard was developed with assistance from business and climate experts and you can go here to check out the scorecard. It’s a great way for consumers to decide which companies are committed to reducing their contribution to global warming and this results in empowered purchasing decisions. There’s even a downloadable pocket version [PDF] of the scorecard you can carry with you.

Well, here’s an interesting way to look at humanity’s impact on the environment - if all humans disappeared off the planet, how would the world fare without us? This is a scenario that the current issue of Scientific American explores (subscription needed, but I’ll give you the gist of the article). Science writer, Alan Weisman, conducts a thought experiment in his book, The World Without Us, and looks at the sequence of events that would most likely occur in the years, decades and centuries following our demise.

Weisman doesn’t actually say what might cause humans to be snuffed out but he starts off by saying that infrastructure would begin to crumble immediately - without street maintenance, road crews and cleaners - highways and boulevards would crack and crumble. Over the decades, houses, office buildings and shopping malls would become dusty caverns but ordinary, everyday items made from stainless steel, like pots and pans, could last for millennia and common plastics could last for years before microbes evolved to consume them. The concrete jungles that are our cities would be reclaimed by verdant forest. Subways would be overrun by water - apparently the New York subway system requires 13 million gallons of water per day to be pumped out otherwise the subways would flood. Focusing on Manhattan, Weisman says that the waterways and rivers that used to form part of Manhattan have been channelled underground and it takes an extraordinary daily effort to hold off nature in her attempt to claim back land and waterways.

Should humans disappear, one of the first things that would happen is the power would go off without people to maintain grids, pumps and so on. The subways would flood; sewer systems would overflow; leaf litter, which is normally swept away by maintenance workers, would clog up drains. The rising rivers would cause the steel frames that hold up the subways and office buildings to corrode causing streets to collapse into the subway system and tall buildings to topple over, perhaps taking others with it. Into the cleared spaces, seeds from plants would blow in off the wind and take hold in the cracks, crevices and pavements. Powdered concrete from decaying buildings would provide lime - a less acidic environment for various species. A city would start to develop its own little ecosystem.

As part of his research, Weisman visited places that humans had abandoned or left to see how nature has evolved. One of these places was the primeval forest in Europe, on the border between Poland and Belarus. It was a game reserve set aside in the 1300s by a Lithuanian duke who later became king of Poland. A series of Polish kings and then Russian czars kept it as their own private hunting ground. There was very little human impact and after World War II it became a national park. Giant oaks and ash trees gently sway in the breeze; wolves howl at night; woodpeckers stuff pine cones into trees; and the last remaining wild herd of Bison bonasus, the native European buffalo, still roams. Weisman also visited the Korean demilitarised zone where a thriving wildlife reserve exists between two armies facing off each other and where wild cranes roost. He suggests that without humans North America would turn into a giant deer habitat; forests would re-establish themselves over the continent and, over time, large herbivores and predators would evolve. The chemicals we have introduced, specifically since the end of WWII, the pollutants and the damage we are currently doing to the environment may have longevity that we can’t yet predict.

It’s not all prophecies of doom and gloom. As Weisman points out, humans have created beautiful and expressive artefacts - sculptures; architecture; fine art; literature - and he asks wouldn’t it be sad for the Earth not to have humans?

The picture he paints of deserted, decaying cities reminds me of a film where many years later humans who survived whatever calamity visited the urban canyons that were once thriving cities. Wild winds whooshed through what were once busy streets and intersections; a lion appeared on the steps of a public building. I can’t recall the film but it sure gave me shivers. Would the world be better off without us?

Okay, I admit I haven’t read the book yet, just the Scientific American article - but I wonder if Weisman considers the hundreds of nuclear reactors out there. If they’re not maintained, wouldn’t they suffer a melt down and leach toxic waste into the atmosphere or soil and kill off life sans humanity?

Anyway, it’s an interesting thought experiment and you can watch a video of it here - but the scary looking dude in the video put me off a bit!