Guthrie, and Scott Klara of the National Energy and Technology Laboratory in Morgantown, West Virginia, and to David Hawkins of the National Resources Defense Council. Susan Lapis of SouthWings and Judy Bonds of the Coal River Mountain Watch showed me the ghosts of former mountains in West Virginia, and what it takes to face and fight such devastation. My thanks also to codirector Monica Moore of the Pesticide Action Network of North America for information on the health impacts of agricultural chemistry; to head scientist David Olson at the Colorado School of Mines for his help with metal-alloy longevity; and to planetary scientist Carolyn Porco of the Cassini Project for thoughts on images literally out of this world. Dr. Thomas Ksiazek, chief of the Special Pathogens Branch at the Centers for Disease Control, and Dr. Jeff Davis, Wisconsin chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for communicable diseases, brought me back to Earth with their impressive dedication to sobering work. Thanks, too, to Michael Mathews of the University of Minnesota and Michael Wilk of Wayne State University for explaining the intricacies of mortuary science, and to Michael Pazar of Wilbert Funeral Services.
Both in discussion and through his always-surprising writing, Oxford’s Nick Bostrom challenged my thinking on multiple subjects. I likewise thank Rabbis Michael Grant and Baruch Clein, Rev. Rodney Richards, Todd Strandberg of Rapture Ready, Sufi Abdulhamit Cakmut, Rev. Hyon Gak Sunim, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama for sharing their varied, thought-provoking contemplations of the Earth after us. Each professes one of the world’s great religions, but what filled my own soul most was their common humanity—a quality also shared by VHEMT’s Les U. Knight, who would bring nature’s human experiment to a close, and the Rewilding Institute’s Dave Foreman, who would keep us, but in cooperation, not conflict, with the rest of our planet’s species. I am particularly beholden to Dr. Wolfgang Lutz of the World Population Program, and his colleague Dr. Sergei Scherbov of the Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for assistance with translating a critical element of that formula into plain numbers—numbers that, quite literally, we could live with. All of us.
My grateful appreciation goes to Jacqueline Sharkey, head of the University of Arizona Journalism Department, and to the university’s Center for Latin American Studies, for encouraging me to combine my annual international journalism seminar with my research in Panama. Likewise, my Ecuador trip, where I was greatly assisted by guest producer Nancy Hand, was supported by my bosom partners at Homelands Productions, who are also my constant inspirations: Sandy Tolan, Jon Miller, and Cecilia Vaisman.
Many other friends, relations, and colleagues sustained me at key moments through the research and writing of this book, with contributions ranging from practical to intellectual, moral, and mystical (to say nothing of culinary)—all prompting ideas and bolstering my energy when I most needed them. For advice, critiques, insights, affection, faith, food, and spare bedrooms, thank you Alison Deming, Jeff Jacobson, Marnie Andrews, Drum Hadley, Rebecca West, Mary Caulkins, Karl Kister, Jim Schley, Barry Lopez, Debra Gwartney, Chuck Bowden, Mary Martha Miles, Bill Wing, Terri Windling, Bill Posnick, Pat Lanier, Constanza Vieira, Diana Hadley, Tom Miller, Ted Robbins, Barbara Ferry, Dick Kamp, Jon Hipps, Caroline Corbin, Clark Strand, Perdita Finn, Molly Wheelwright, Marvin Shaver, and Joan Kravetz, and very special thanks to my able research aide, Julie Kentnor. This list also includes some entire families: Nubar Alexanian, Rebecca Koch, and Abby Koch Alexanian; Karen, Benigno, Elias, and Alma Sanchez-Eppler; and Rochelle, Peter, Brian, and Pahoua Hoffman.
I am indebted, too, to the artists whose work graces these pages. Digital magician Markley Boyer brings data to stunning life for the Mannahatta Project. Janusz Korbel has long photographed the splendors of Poland’s Bialowieza Puszcza for the same impassioned reasons that inspire Vivian Stockman to document the missing mountains of West Virginia. Archaeologist Murat Ertugrul Giilyaz and biologist Jim Maragos each contributed images evoking their respective subsurface specialities: the underground cities of central Turkey and the Pacific coral reef.
Peter Yates’s image of decaying Varosha, Cyprus, has special poignancy: three decades earlier, he met his wife there. Perhaps symbolically, as he snapped the picture a foreground sprig of wild grass blew in front of his lens, partly obscuring the abandoned hotel’s facade; with his assent, it was photo-surgically removed by Ronn Spencer of ’Sole Studios. Ronn and his colleague Blake Hines also expertly processed color photographs into black-and-white renditions for this book.
The reproduction of Annapolis illustrator Phyllis Saroff’s resurrected passenger pigeon in flight doesn’t fully reflect her delicately colored original, but the gray-scale version she kindly provided has its own haunting power. And I can never thank Carl Buell enough for creating original drawings of a litoptern, a giant sloth, and of our forebear
Artist Jon Lomberg’s contribution here goes far beyond the reproduced silhouette he drew for the interstellar Voyager spacecrafts. Jon’s vision exemplifies how art can literally soar beyond our supposed limitations and surprise us with manifestations of spirit that feel linked to eternity. His act of preserving sounds and images that embody such spirit is truly one of humanity’s enduring achievements. I am deeply thankful to him, and to Manhattan art conservators Barbara Appelbaum and Paul Himmelstein, for what they bring not only to this book, but to us all.
At MetalPhysic, their Tucson studio and foundry, Tony Bayne and Jay Luker preserve human expression in that most enduring of metal alloys, bronze. I met them through a sculptor who, to my miraculous good fortune, is my wife, Beckie Kravetz. To know that bronze sculptures such as the graceful figures she conjures have a better chance than nearly anything else we humans do of lasting until the end of Earthly time feels utterly fitting and proper to me. Here’s a vast understatement: without her, this book simply would not exist.
Here’s another: All of us humans have myriad other species to thank. Without them,
Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.
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