Page 126 - IELTS Preparation Grammar and Vocab

Exam practice

II

Reading and Use of English Part 6
You are going to read four reviews from a website in which different writers give their views on a book
about what the Earth would be like if people disappeared from it. For questions 1 -4, choose from the
reviews A -0. The reviews may be chosen more than once.

The World Without Us
Four reviewers comment on author Alan Weisman's book called The World Without Us.
A
Alan Weisman imagines what the Earth would be like if humans were suddenly and completely wiped out.
This starting point ignores the fact that nothing is likely to kill us off completely, at least not without taking
a large part of the rest of life with us. Even if a virus appeared with a 99.99 percent kill rate, it would still
leave more than enough naturally immune survivors to repopulate the Earth to current levels in 50,000 years.
This said, Weisman's book is fascinating, readable and thought-provoking. The mass of scientific evidence
of human impact that he compiles is mind-boggling. I did not know, for instance, that there are one billion
annual bird deaths from flying into glass in the United States alone; or that graphic designers have been
called in to imagine what warnings against approaching nuclear waste containers will be comprehensible
10,000 or more years from now. His solution is a mandatory one-child limit for all families worldwide. Radical,
but undoubtedly necessary, as he convincingly argues.

Alan Weisman's 'thought experiment' in The World Without Us is to imagine what the world would be like if
every human vanished tomorrow. But he offers no real context for the book, no rationale for exploring this
fantasy other than his unsubstantiated belief that people find it fascinating. Perhaps they do, and we might
guess their reasons. But none emerges in any compelling way to explain why it is important to know, for
instance, that the Great Wall of China will crumble in a few centuries. Much of the book comprises revelation;
of this kind, but there is little information here that is all that new. If you follow environmental issues, nothing
in The World Without Us is likely to shock or astound you. The way to avoid the apocalypse, so Weisman
believes, is to limit to one child every human female on Earth. However, his draconian solution is only briefly
described and comes much too late in the book to be convincing.

What Alan Weisman does is imagine what would happen to the world if we were all wiped out. And it is quite
understandable, as we learn during the course of this book, to take this as a realistic prospect as we are
very, very bad for our own environment. What starts out with promise continues disappointingly. For those
well versed in the science of environmental degradation, the book provides numerous anecdotes about
our appalling impact on the Earth that sound all too familiar. Personally, I found Weisman's journalistic style
increasingly irritating as the book progressed. Is it really necegeary to know that his interviewees include a
'curly-haired young director' or someone 'trim and youthful in their early fifties'? His most extreme solution,
to limit families to one child, is unrealistic. Although readers might agree that there are too many of us, few
will share Weisman's certainty that to trade a child for more birdsong is a good bargain.

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