The Revenge of Gaia

"The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back - and How we Can Still Save Humanity" (2006) is a book by James Lovelock.

Thesis

Lovelock believes that it is too late to avoid significant global heating and significant climate change which will make large parts of the Earth's surface much less hospitable for humans. As a result, there will be an inevitable, major decline in the human population over the next hundred years. Lovelock's answer is that nuclear power is the only short-term solution for the preservation of civilization as it stands now. The dangers that many environmentalists see from nuclear power are quite minor with respect to most of Earth's ecologies. Lovelock sees benign alternate energy sources as inadequate and irrelevant at best.

Lovelock draws a distinction between his original Gaia hypothesis of the 1970s and current Gaia theory. He believes that the time will come when the United States government takes global heating seriously and that they will respond with immense planet-scale engineering fixes, perhaps space based. While he indicates these may succeed, he is left despondent by the prospect that humans will have to deal with the extra costs of maintaining a habitable surface climate, a task formerly done for the human race by Gaia.

Lovelock thinks the time is past for sustainable development, and that we have come to a time when development is no longer sustainable. He proposes that we need sustainable retreat from an impending "Climate Storm"; that we must retreat in an orderly fashion from the coming threats to our global habitat, to mitigate adverse impacts on human health and happiness.

According to Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. He says that "By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris - as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position." Lovelock believes it is too late to repair the damage. "If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 - between 43C and 49C (120F). It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow - there will be almost no food grown in Europe. We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race." [ [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=541748&in_page_id=1770 Daily Mail - 22 March 2008 - We're all doomed ! 40 years from global catastrophe - says climate change expert] ]

ee also

*Risks to civilization, humans and planet Earth
*Gaia movement

Citation

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References

External links

* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23114-2008072,00.html Richard Mabey reviews] The Revenge of Gaia (Times Online)
* [http://www.davesabine.com/Thoughts/TheRevengeofGaia/tabid/184/Default.aspx A reader's review] (Dave Sabine)
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/scienceandnature/story/0,,1738946,00.html No atom of doubt] , edited extract from "The Guardian", 24 March 2006