James Lovelock is a well-known inventor and scientist (chemistry, medicine, earth science). He has written more than 200 peer reviewed papers and he is famous for inventing the electron capture detector which was used in the discovery of the role CFCs played in stratospheric ozone depletion. However, he is probably most known for putting forth the Gaia hypothesis, that the earth’s surface is a self-regulating system with the goal of sustaining life. In a sense Gaia functions as a large super organism.
According to James Lovelock the living earth, including the biosphere, the atmosphere, and the top layer of the earth’s crust form a self regulating system of which we all are part of. This self regulating system has kept our planet hospitable to life for three billion years. When the sun was too cold it warmed the biosphere. Now when the sun is too hot it cools the biosphere.
Human civilization has been very successful, in fact too successful. Our numbers have swelled from a few million to seven billion and we live longer and healthier lives than ever before. However, our success has taken a great toll on Gaia and soon we will have to face grave consequences which very well might mean the end of human civilization, perhaps even the end of the human race.
This book is about the Gaia hypothesis as well as the peril that our planet is facing. In my opinion these are two interesting and related but different topics. James Lovelock may not agree with that statement, I don’t know. However, whether the Gaia hypothesis is true or not, our planet is still in peril, but James Lovelock’s assessment and suggestions are equally valid in both cases. I am not sure I believe his Gaia hypothesis but, in any case, it brings life and useful metaphors to the discussion.
The human race has reshaped the surface of earth via agriculture, cattle herding, and by building cities and roads. We are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which changes the carbon cycle, the temperature, oceans, and the climate. The combination of our prosperity and large numbers has had a major impact on Gaia. 55 millions years ago the world saw a sharp rise in temperatures which caused a major extinction at the time. The earth remained in an overheated state for 100,000 years. The same pattern is being repeated today, however, a lot of green forests that could moderate the effects 55 million years ago are gone today. James Lovelock is particularly worried about catastrophic climate change. Things we do not yet know about. He believes that it may already be too late. We may already have set the planet on an unstoppable death march.
Lovelock believes that we have a lot of options available to mitigate the effects and to prevent disaster. Unfortunately the people standing in the way are often his fellow environmentalists. What is typically referred to as renewable energy is too expensive and too destructive to Gaia. It is not able to sustain our advanced civilization and unfortunately we need our advanced civilization to sustain the existence of 7 billion people without completely ravaging Gaia. Even though it has improved a lot solar energy is still ineffective. According to James Lovelock the only realistic energy source is Nuclear Power. Nuclear Power is clean, safe, and perfectly natural and it does not harm Gaia. According to James Lovelock, the belief that Nuclear Power is dangerous to us and the natural world is the greatest misunderstanding of our time. I do agree with him that we need nuclear power, but I think he underestimates wind power as well as other ways to reduce carbon emissions such as a carbon fee.
He also discusses various ways to ameliorate the damage done by fossil fuels, for example, by extracting green house gases from the atmosphere, and by using Geo engineering. He discusses cooling the atmosphere using solar panels in space (100 million dollars project), and by using aerosols. He also envisions us producing artificial food using Nuclear Power as an energy source. By doing that we could to a large extent heal Gaia quickly.
These things are doable and would most likely work but are off the table to a large extent because of misguided fellow environmentalists who are suspicious of scientists and modern technology. Our consumption hungry society has damaged Gaia and now it needs healing but the medicine is being withheld by those who claim to care about Gaia. Many environmentalists prefer organic produce despite the fact that it harms the environment and Gaia even more than mass producing large farms. He compares Gaia to a patient who has heart problems because of unhealthy eating, living and smoking. When the patient has a heart attack it is too late to begin a diet and start exercising. What the patient needs is oxygen and immediate care until the crisis is over, however, this is being withheld. He is referring to this as sustainable retreat as opposed to sustainable development which he believes we do not have time for. I should add that Patrick Moore, a founder of Green Peace, is another prominent environmentalist who shares James Lovelock’s opinions.
James Lovelock loves the living earth. His love for our natural world and for Gaia is the thread that goes through this book as well as his life. You can really feel his Gaia love pouring through the pages of this book. Unlike so many environmentalists whom I have interacted with or listened to in the past he does not have any other agendas. He is not anti-capitalist, or anti-western, or anti-technology, or anti-science, he loves Gaia and he is well educated. If we die Gaia lives. If Gaia dies we die. Gaia comes before the human race and still he really cares about his fellow man and future generations. When it is about saving Gaia all options are on the table and ideologies have to wait. This makes him remarkably honest, remarkably thoughtful, and remarkably relevant.
James Lovelock says that in general we aren’t bad people intentionally polluting our world. Modern man is not worse or better than ancient man or the Stone Age man. He describes how the Australian aborigines probably turned the great ancient Australian forests into deserts via their hunting techniques (putting things on fire). We are like the aborigines, not any better, not any worse; it is just a lot more of us. Now when we understand the situation, we need to be sensible.
I believe that people who are suspicious of greens are typically not suspicious of greens because they don’t care about our natural environment. On the contrary, it is because they see other agendas and pig headed ideologies that do not help the environment. In my opinion James Lovelock’s ideas could really reach all kinds of people both conservatives and liberals, despite the fact that he is a global warming alarmist and the greenest green scientist you will ever meet. He even criticizes the indiscriminate banning of DDT which saved millions of lives until it was banned. This is something you normally only hear from right wing circles and it also happens to be true. People have a lot of misconceptions about the natural world and our health which he corrects in this book. Many natural substances are a lot more dangerous to your health than artificial substances. He criticizes alternative medicine as being bogus medicine and he criticizes people’s irrational fear of radiation and artificially created chemicals. Our obsession with the natural is killing what is natural.
I should say that he also opened my eyes in regards to how I am living. I assumed that I was doing pretty well using wind power generated electricity to heat my home. Then I see that it might not be much better than fossil fuels. What I need to do more than anything else to help Mother Nature is to argue for the use of Nuclear Power and reduce the amount of energy that I am consuming and plant trees. Lush and green is better.
This book touched on some extremely important subjects and it was interesting reading. The book was written for laymen and did not go into depth. It had very few references and very little scientific language. He is not trying to prove anything scientifically in this book. He is just trying to give the average man some insights into what he believes. I should add that I have read quite a bit of books and articles in Scientific American and Nature that go into more depth on the subjects that he is discussing. In my opinion, except a few paragraphs of garbage on page 37, he is quite accurate and his polemic stays thoughtful and tempered. The book is also well written and easy to read and it contains a lot of interesting ideas.
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