The World Without Us

At the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, I thank Karen Lutz of U.S. Fish and Wildlife; the DOE’s Joe Leguerre; and John Rampe, John Corsi, and Bob Nininger of Kaiser-Hill. At the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal, my appreciation goes to refuge manager Dean Rundle and to Matt Kales. Panamanian anthropologist Stanley Heckadon Moreno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute gave me an ecological context for the monumental reality of the Panama Canal that Abdiel Perez, Modesto Echevers, Johnny Cuevas, and Bill Huff kindly showed me. In Northwest Territories, Arctic guide and pilot “Tundra” Tom Faess flew and hiked me through fabulous parts of the Canadian wilderness, including the diamond-mining region, and the BHP (now BHP-Billiton) Corporation graciously gave me a tour of their Ekati diamond mine, and also a singular thrill: holding a 52-million-year-old chunk of unpetrified redwood in my hands.

As a boy I’d always planned to be a scientist, though I could never figure out what kind, because everything interested me. How could I become an astronomer, if it meant not being a paleontologist? My great fortune as a journalist has been the chance to commune with brilliant scientists from so many disciplines, and in so many fascinating places. Accompanying archaeologist Arthur Demarest to Dos Pilas in Guatemala was among the most memorable trips of my life. Another was visiting Chernobyl with nuclear physicists Andriy Demydenko and Volodya Tykhyy, and landscape architect David Hulse, systems analyst Kit Larsen, and the late, deeply missed environmental educator John Baldwin of the University of Oregon. On an assignment to Antarctica several years ago, courtesy of the National Science Foundation and the Los Angeles Times Magazine, optical physicist Ray Smith, biologist Barbara Prezelin, both of the University of California-Santa Barbara, and molecular biologist Deneb Karentz of UC-San Francisco shared their pioneering research on ozone depletion, which remains critical to our understanding today. Over multiple trips to the Amazon, herpetologist Bill Lamar has continually taught me more. Closer to home, I was profoundly moved to see the Harvard Forest with David Foster and old-growth woods in Oregon with U.S. Forest Service geologist Fred Swanson and philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore.

I’m still savoring my conversation with the Smithsonian’s extinction expert, Doug Erwin. My gratitude for willingness to explain years of scientific sleuthing also goes to research-fisheries biologist Diana Papoulias; ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan; hazardous-materials specialist Enrique Medina; risk assessment engineer Bob Roberts; Stanford “garbologist” William Rathje; paleoornithologist David Steadman, who found the last ground sloths in Caribbean caves; ornithologist Steve Hilty, whose exhaustive bird guides have added weight to both my luggage and my words; and biologist-anthropologist Peter Warshall, who lucidly connects everything. Nuclear-safety engineer David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists and nuclear operations and engineering director Alex Marion of the Nuclear Energy Institute were both essential to my understanding of the inner sanctums of nuclear plants. Thanks as well to NEI spokesman Mitch Singer, to Susan Scott of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Project, and to Arizona Public Service for access to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station. My great admiration, too, to Gregory Benford, the University of California-Irvine physicist and Nebula Award—winning science fiction author who helped me think about time, past and future—no small task.

Paleontologist Richard White has helped Tucson’s International Wildlife Museum, which he directs, grow into a research and educational facility— not unlike many renowned museums whose exhibits were originally big-game trophies collected by hunters. I was first taken there by the eminent paleoecologist Paul Martin, who calls it a place of reflection. My very special thanks to Paul Martin for many engrossing hours and enlightening thoughts, and for suggestions springing from his deep familiarity with the canon of scientific literature on extinctions, including many works that challenge his own theories. My final interview on this subject, with C. Vance Haynes, helped me to put all the competing scholarship into a context that reveals the collective contributions of each.