The Earth and us

While tropical temperatures show no signs of leaving the Mediterranean basin and we wonder why there are still people who don’t believe in global warming, we think a book like La terra dopo di noi (The Earth After Us) can help us reflect on the serious mistakes our species has made and continues to make. The book, written by Telmo Pievani with photographs by Frans Lanting, was published in 2019, yet it feels as relevant as ever, since the problems related to how we “manage” both the lands we inhabit and those we do not have certainly not improved since then. The two authors propose an exercise: imagine an Earth without us. A planet without the so-called sapiens.

Who will come after us? Does the future still have a future? Telmo Pievani answers these questions by exploring, with the help of Frans Lanting’s extraordinary photographs, our planet and imagining it a few years from now, free from the burdensome presence of humanity. In a narrative unfolding across six chapters (The Earth without us, The Earth before us, The Earth and us, Us and the Earth, The Earth is us, The Earth against us, The Earth with us), Pievani recounts the history of evolution, beginning with the planet’s rich vegetation, the presence of diverse and now extinct animal species, the post-apocalyptic scenarios of a probable asteroid impact on Earth approximately 66 million years ago, and continuing to the arrival of mammals and the sharp decline in biodiversity over geological eras. Homo sapiens enters this narrative in an “invasive and predatory” manner, making us the first self-threatened species, aware of our own impact.

Pievani reminds us that “the self-referential dynamics that led ancient civilizations to collapse due to resource depletion and internal divisions can now be repeated for the human species as a whole“. Although the first sparks of life date back to approximately 3.5 billion years ago, that is, about a billion years after the Earth’s formation, and Homo sapiens only appeared between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago, in our brief existence on this biosphere we have left—and are leaving—a marked mark. Visible. In the sense that approximately ten thousand years ago, in different parts of the world more or less simultaneously, our ancestors abandoned their economy based on gathering and hunting to embrace one based on agriculture and livestock farming.

It was from then on that Homo sapiens began burning vast tracts of land and started building cities and monuments, while the human population grew from a few million to several hundred million. The biosphere took notice of this profound change. So much so that many scientists today, as Pievani reminds us, date that period as the beginning of the Anthropocene: the biogeological era in which humanity is the main driver of change, that “imperfect species […] as the fruit of Darwinian evolution, that is, a repeated bricolage that is not optimal but works. Part of our evolutionary imperfection includes the lack of foresight, the desire for immediate gratification, perceptual illusions, the propensity for superstition, gut reactions when thoughtfulness is needed, hesitation when instinctive speed is required, the ease with which we are seduced and persuaded, and the weaknesses and irrationalities to which we willingly give in. All characteristics that were once useful in certain circumstances, but are much less so today“.

If you are a member of EARTH GARDENERS APS you can purchase this book with a 5% discount at the “Messaggerie sarde” bookshop in Sassari, in Piazza Castello 11. If you don’t yet have the 2026 membership card, you can pick it up at the bookshop when you go shopping!

Credits
Author: Anna Lacci is a science communicator and expert in environmental education, sustainability, and place-based teaching. She is the author of documentaries, nature books, workbooks, interdisciplinary teaching resources, and multimedia informational materials.

Translated by Maria Antonietta Sessa