Gone in an Instant
Let your imagination ponder. What would happen in Britain if humans disappeared from planet Earth in an instant?
The factories would cease. Cars would be stationary. Pollution would stop and rivers would clean themselves within months. Would nuclear power stations safely shut themselves down? I’m not sure. Perhaps they would not be able to do so because they would have no electricity supply to power their safety mechanisms. Many pets would die, trapped in their owners’ homes.
In Britain there are no large predators outside of zoos. Reports of wild cats roaming free are unsubstantiated and in my opinion unlikely. The chances are that large predators in zoos would perish in their cages but there would be some dogs and cats at large. Given time (the friend of evolution), cats and dogs would evolve to fill the large predator niches. It probably would not take very long in geological terms. The dingo in Australia is a model for the route that domestic dogs might take. Cats would soon become tiger equivalents ready to predate the herds of red deer.
Increasingly British farms rear exotic animals such as bison, lamas and water buffalo perhaps some of these might escape their fields and establish populations.
Left to its own devices most of Britain would be covered in forest. Scotland had its Caledonian pine forest and England its small leaved lime and oak woods. Mankind has now introduced all sorts of non-native trees and shrubs. I wonder how these would fare. Spruces do very well. Larches, sycamore and beech are strong parts of the mix. It is reasonable to suppose that the original forest of Scotland would not return because of the additional species from all around the world. It is hard to see rhododendron not doing well in mountainous areas.
What about climate change? Well, there would be an immediate end to the burning of fossil fuels and so levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would stop rising but there is already some global warming built into the system via the greenhouse effect. Any rise in temperature would be unlikely to be catastrophic for the planet and the danger of positive feedback with the release of methane from the seabed and permafrost would recede. Coral reefs would recover. Sea acidification would be halted. Whales and dolphins would be able to hear themselves speak since there would be no vessels plying the oceans.
What about intelligence? Some animals are quite bright – monkeys and apes. Some animals are very bright – whales and dolphins. Dolphins may well be more intelligent than humans but they have no hands and cannot make things. The chances are that the like of human intelligence would not re-evolve anywhere in the world, let alone in Britain. It took a long time before human intelligence evolved and there is no guarantee that the right conditions would happen again. Humans have only become really numerous in the last few thousand years with the development of farming and then industry. I’m not sure that we are intelligent enough to avoid extinction. When it comes it won’t be in an instant – “not with a bang but with a whimper”.
It would be interesting to see the overgrown cities, the disappearing motorways and rusting cars but then we won’t be there to see them. Never mind, the cabbage white butterfly will keep a watch for us but will it ponder?