Occasionally, to stoke conversation at a dinner party, I'll tell people the biggest environmental threat to the planet is actually the human race itself, and wouldn't it be great if the human race disappeared tomorrow? I don't feel so clever or innovative anymore, because I just found out there is a group called the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement" that advocates exactly that. I doubt many people take it seriously, but the fact someone went as far as to create a movement about it speaks volumes.

I found out about VHEM through an article about a new book called "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman which I fully intend to read.  Here's a description of what it would be like, from a Publishers Weekly blurb about the book:

Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like.

Update: I've placed my order on Amazon!