In spite of all the damage we’ve done, our impact on the earth is more evanescent than you might imagine. I’m fascinated by books like Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us or Jonathan Waldman’s Rust: The Longest War, which describe how all the artifacts of our civilization would dissolve and disappear without human beings to maintain them. Here’s a case in point: a long-abandoned pickup truck, left to peacefully rust and rejoin nature, in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Note how the wheels are sinking into the ground, something that Charles Darwin discovered the reason for.