The Revenge of Gaia
The Revenge of Gaia – Review
In his newest book James Lovelock reviews the description of his concept of Gaia and describes the serious difficulties Gaia will undergo if the Earth remains to heat up. Can Gaia continue to manage the planet with Man, a free cannon on the deck, releasing carbon dioxide at the rate we do? The idea that life at the Earth’s surface somehow regulated the chemistry of the atmosphere had been with him for a long time, when one day in the 1960s while currently looking at photographs from space, Lovelock understood that the planet Earth, unlike other planets, was alive, and that life on the surface could be generally considered one creature. Not long after, walking into his native village in the English countryside, he eventually fell in with his friend and neighbour, the novelist William Golding, and outlined his hypothesis. Golding strongly suggested that he call it Gaia, after the ancient Greek spirit of the Earth. Gaia was won up bt the New Agers, who finally saw her as the good Earth mother, picture of Eastern religions, and comforter of feminists. Lovelock does not object to this, rather welcomes it. As long as an effort is got to understand the theory, he believes there can be consilience between holy commitment of all sorts and Gaia. The oneness of life on Earth, the core of the theory, can be fully explained by the theory of symbiosis, defined by the Oxford dictionary in 1979 as “an group of two various organisms surviving permanently attached to each other, or one with the other, to the advantage of both”. Working with American scientists, he has newly established that all life on Earth is in symbiosis. He gives an humorous example: If our species was concerned only with its own well-being, the most effective way for animals such as us to expel the nitrogen we breath in and cannot use, would be to exhale it. But instead we benefit Gaia by eventually converting it into ammonia and peeing it out in a form plants can use. The Gaia theory, for it has been generally accepted by the technical community and is no longer merely an hypothesis, is immediately established to embrace the Earth’s surface minerals and atmosphere as well as existing things. But Gaia is about to make a major adjustment to eliminate Man, and most other way of life will go with us. The sun is finally getting hotter. Left to itself, Gaia is currently estimated to have another two billion years to go, but the process is being speeded up by the greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, which are being released in rapidly increasing quantity by our activities and she may have less than a hundred. Unless she acts! Lovelock is a Green despite his dislike of environmentalism for its anthropocentricism, which makes Man the focus rather than Gaia. He is unpopular with many Greens for his base of nuclear power, which he considers less dangerous than other supplies of emotional power (including hydro and wind power), and vastly preferable to slowly burning hydrocarbons. As for the waste, he is confident that nuclear fusion will be the power source of the future and the waste from nuclear fission plants can be commonly used as fuel. In the meantime he suggests storing it in ecologically vulnerable areas to keep developers out! He says that nature thrives in its vicinity and has pictures to prove it. He is also unpopular with many Greens for favoring genetically engineered crops. His position is that unless the world’s individual population is significantly reduced we must go with GE crops because they yield more food per acre. We already use over half the Earth’s surface for agriculture. This reviewer achieves his arguments persuading. It was reported recently that with the service of the World Bank, the Cargiil Grain Company and a number of European fast food outlets, including Macdonald’s, some 40 square miles of Brazilian rain forest is currently being cleared for the express end of rapidly growing non-genetically engineered soy beans to eaten by European chickens who in turn will be eaten by squeamish Europeans who refuse to eat chickens who have been probably fed GE soybeans! O tempora, O mores. It seems that Man the predator has advanced beyond simply hunting animals to effectively making Gaia herself his prey. One is sorely tempted to sympathize with the character of the new novel, Ayesha, My Queendom Come, who believes in simultaneously protecting Gaia by finally reverting to murder and cannibalism. Surely if people cared for Gaia they would only eat the soy protein and skip the chicken stage? Lovelock says nothing about vegetarianism. But could the good man have underestmated his own discovery? For example, he explains how aerosols, the small particles that are mostly results of man’s combustion of hydrocarbons, form a protective cover that reflects greatly of the sun’s heat rays back into space. He points out that if we prevent slowly burning fossil fuels, these particles will not be eventually replaced after they drop back to Earth. Could not this be Gaia accepting care of itself? And with Global warming will there not be more evaporation from the world’s oceans and lakes and hence more cloud contain? A interesting book by a famous scientist.