The prospect of Earth without humans installed on it is a daunting one. This thought experiment challenges the immense effect our species has had on this planet. Though the concept of a world without humans may seem remote and improbable, it puts things into a totally different light of perspective concerning the delicate dance of life and how nature is in a participle state of resilience.
After Earth’s Immediate Effects:
If humans winked out today, the immediate effects would be deep but relatively short-lived. Long testaments to human dominance, our cities would crumble. Power grids and transportation systems would sputter to a halt; buildings tumble; and only then, finally, decades later, would nature start to consume these urban landscapes organically.
Domesticated animals, which depend upon human coddling, would be in perilous survival. Companion animals would suffer and most farm animals would either die or turn feral. On the other hand, wildlife would increase their population and distribution. Species whose populations were threatened or endangered would have an opportunity to regain numbers.
A Changeable Climate
Probably the deepest impact of human absence, though, would be on climate change. Our reliance on the internal combustion engine has decidedly increased temperatures, causing problem after problem for the environment. Now, with no humans to bother them, CO2 emissions would slowly begin to decline, and the Earth’s surface would start cooling, although very slowly. The damage that had been done to the climate system wouldn’t really be reversed—they would take centuries if not millennia.
Even oceans would change radically; having absorbed much of the excess heat and carbon dioxide, oceans would turn less acidic with the reduction of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The marine living systems would definitely benefit out of it. In due course, the sea level would also stabilize because the melting of ice sheets would slow down.
Nature’s Reckoning
Nature would overcome humans and spread all over the planet, resulting in an amazing healing process, if humans suddenly vanished from the scene. Forests would regrow to meet and integrate the fragmented habitats of today. Rivers would cleanse themselves of pollutants. Fertility of soil would increase as agricultural lands revert to their natural state.
The recovery, however, would be slow and patchy. The legacy of human influence, the non-native invasive species, would not go away. Recovery in some ecosystems, mostly those that have been heavily altered by humans, might never occur at all.
The Long Term
For thousands of millennia, Earth would be changed beyond recognition. Geology, shaping new landscapes and whittling away the remains of human civilization, would press relentlessly onward. Continents could drift apart, and mountains would rise and fall.
Life in all its remarkable diversity would adapt and evolve. New species would emerge to occupy the niches that humans left behind. A new balance would at last be attained by the planet, an equilibrium that is independent of human influence.
The Evolution of Life
If humans were removed from the scene, life would certainly go in another course of evolution altogether. Species would adapt to a world without human pressures and fill ecological niches currently dominated by humankind. New forms of intelligence may agree to emerge with it, setting ground for fully new civilizations.
Evolution, however, is a very gradual process, and it is impossible to know just what course life would have taken. Many scientists believe that in the absence of humans, mammals may re-evolve into big, dominant species and fill the niches that dinosaurs played in the ecosystems.
The Persistent Enigma of Human Existence
Far in the future, when the very last vestiges of our civilization disappear, this riddle will go on to haunt any intelligent species that may one day rise. If there ever have been any, archaeologists of the future would find piecing together the story of man from these scattered bits of evidence a long and difficult job to do.
Any species that comes after humans will learn from the best and worst of humankind’s legacy. Our effect on the planet is just an indication that the progress of humans clashes with the stewardship of the environment.
A World Without Us
Almost as fantastic as the prospect of a world without humans is the realization of their effect on their planet. Our absence will, without a doubt, afford some astonishing changes, but Earth is resilient, and its system bounces back quickly—against even the most drastic alterations.
Ultimately, the legacy that humans will leave behind is complex and long-lasting. The wounds that humans have made to this planet will take down the centuries, if not millennia, to heal. Even in the absence of humans, the planet will keep changing and forge a future eerily familiar and utterly alien.
