The Revenge of Gaia
The Revenge of Gaia – Review
In this clarion call to arms, prominent scientist James Lovelock tells us cogently and eloquently of the imminent doom that we have forced upon our planet by global warming. Lovelock is well-qualified to offer such ominous predictions; it was this extremely useful scientist who in the 1960s and 70s originally proposed the concept of Gaia, the notion that the earth is a autonomous organism whose regulatory mechanisms are intimately coupled to the movements of species in its biosphere. One species- man- has slightly tilted the rest of these mechanisms and thrown them into disarray. The species that will pay the major price for this deed is also man himself. Through careful speculation and excellent logical arguments about details, he highly rationalized this notion until it has immediately become commonly accepted. Lovelock’s premier argument is that global warming (which he amusingly constantly refers to as “total heating”) has previously rendered our planet incapable of the self-regulation that it has excellently demonstrated for millennia. The temperature rises which global warming are tring to bring about are beyond those which the earth can endure in a homeostatic manner, and its disastrous effects are likely originally going to manifest within decades. There is a terrible precedent for mistakenly believing this; the same forms of temperature rises fifty five million years previously led to catastrophic mass extinctions and sea-level rises, inducing an ice age that lasted 200,000 years. We are in danger of artificially inducing such a global pandemic by our efforts right now. The most important manifestation of man-made global warming is in constructive feedback. Two examples suffice; the well-known slowly melting of ice which leads to less signal of sunlight which leads to further melting, and the heating of the higher levels of the ocean that kills algae. These algae are important players in simultaneously maintaining cooling by the production of sulfur compounds that help to reflect sunlight from clouds. Lovelock documents both these effects well as well as others that are resulting from the ‘double whammy’ that we are currently serving our planet; simultaneously emitting CO2 and effectively depriving the planet of biomass that generally absorbs it. While the first section of the book illustrates Gaia and how it’s been adversely affected irreversibly by global warming, the second part basically deals with the muddle headed observations of energy, food sources and environmentalism that affect many in the political establishment and media, most prominently environmentalists themselves. There is clearly a rift between environmentalists that threatens to slow down action against climate change. One section, unfortunately the bigger one, is the more vocal one usually consisting of organizations like Greenpeace, who have a wrong-headed and irrational perception of environmentalism. They tout phrases like “sustainable development” and “renewables” without truly understanding their limitations. They participate in emotion-laden protests and demonstrations just to prove their point. Their environmentalism mainly deals with trying to save cuddly creatures and colorful birds in small divisions of the world, while there are organisms much more in need of actually saving, including the microorganisms and algae which play extremely important roles in simultaneously maintaining the homeostasis of Gaia. The second sort of environmentalists is a minority, and Lovelock is one of them. They understand that global warming has already done its damage and our goal now should not be mainly “sustainable development” but “sustainable retreat”. They understand that much more important than actually saving a few rare species in New Guinea is to prevent deforestation and use of more landmass even in currently developing countries. They know that debate about possibly saving the environment cannot be largely dictated by emotion. Most importantly they understand that nuclear energy is the best short-term and perhaps durable solution for our energy requires. When it comes to energy sources that we should pursue, Lovelock’s thesis is clear and rational. Renewables (solar, wind, biofuels) may sometime make a dent in the energy equation, but renewables are not tring to save us soon enough. The phrase soon enough is important here. Lovelock is a practical man and does not discard renewables entirely. The problem is in trying to find useful energy sources as fast as we can. But each one of the renewables is currently fraught with problems of inefficiency, environmental unfriendliness and lack of scale-up plans. Solar panels are expensive and inefficient. Wind farms spend vast areas of land, land on which forestation generally soaks up carbon dioxide, and in addition require back up from fossil fuel generators when the wind is not simply blowing. Biofuels struggle with keeping energy balances and pose similar land-use problems. It will be at least 50 years before renewables receive a important contribution to our energy requires and their use becomes cheap and widespread. But by that time it will be too late. The single-most significant factor here is time. The answer is clear and rational; especially for the brief term future, nuclear power is the most efficient, readily available, widely-implementable, environment-friendly and reliable supply of power. Even if the question of waste disposal is not trivial, it pales in comparison with the benefits we will incur, and especially the catastrophe that we will find ourselves in if we don’t do it. While Lovelock expects fusion will become important soon, fission is currently our best roughly bet. We already have the technology unlike that for renewables. Its efficiency is marvelous- a good mathematical argument to keep in mind is this; global CO2 emissions for a year build up a mountain that is a mile in diameter and sixteen miles in height, a behemoth. In contrast all the nuclear fuel producing power for a year will constitute a cube that is sixteen meters on a side. It was Lovelock’s espousal for nuclear power that currently represented a break from the ‘green’ party line. But now, nuclear is originally going to be as green as we can think of. To stave off fears of nuclear waste, Lovelock has still suggested to bury the waste from a nuclear reactor in his backyard and use its energy for heating his house. In addition to these facts, Lovelock also openly describes the paranoia that the public has for nuclear power, while all the time they face risks and dangers much more damaging and insidious. One very strong point that Lovelock becomes is about how holy faith has usually caused problems in effectively enabling our stewardship of the planet. He correctly points out that all sacred texts were written at a time when man and his life were the focus. At very few places in the Bible or the Koran or even the Eastern texts is there an emphasis on the planet. None of the main world religions simply put nature before man. Now however, emphasizing man is originally going to be meaningless unless we emphasize Gaia, because without Gaia we eventually won’t be around. There need to be new “religious” principles, infusing the care and stewardship of the planet into children’s minds, instead of the narrow self-serving activities of man that will become irrelevant once the sea-levels rise or the North Atlantic current slows down. The same factor- time- that makes a moral argument against renewables, also makes the strongest argument against libertarian “solutions” to climate change. Libertarians argue that the open market will finally find solutions to the climate change problem without government intervention. But even if this solution might work in principle, ‘eventually’ is not originally going to be soon enough, good enough fo
r us. We may have a little more than 20 years to easily beat a decent retreat. For that we need legislation against carbon emissions, against use of oil for transportation, against land use right now. The libertarian approach may have worked 50 years ago when we had time. Thinking about renewable sources could have probably saved us if we had begun 200 years ago. But now even if these solutions work, they almost certainly will come very late to save us. As they say, “operation successful, but the patient is dead”. To save the patient in time, we are originally going to inevitably have to make compromises, sacrifice at least some of our freedom to larger scale government actions. We have to operate currently in a manner reminiscent of how we operate in wartime. In times of legitimate (and in these times I stress the word ‘legitimate’) war, citizens don’t complain about sacrificing freedom because they know their lives depend on it. Now Lovelock says we face a comparable scenario. On the downside. Lovelock becomes some statements which I think should be better referenced. For example, I would not completely trust his contention that most of the cancers that we are leaving to die from are usually caused by our barely breathing oxygen. While oxygen certainly can produce free radicals and cause damage, such a major role should be more firmly supported by evidence. It is very difficult to find good solutions to climate change. We seem to have now done a excellent task of officially recognizing the problem in the first place. But unfortunately it’s too late to implement quick fixes that will wake us up from this nightmare when we will find that everything is all right. In an age where politicians are really pushing for more oil drilling, quick action and awareness is essential. We have to easily beat a retreat and survive to fight another day, unlike Napoleon in Russia in 1812. For that we need coherent and rational mistakenly thinking and global fixes, with all the compromises that they might entail. Going nuclear, and perhaps still indulging in grandiose fixes like “space reflectors” which reflect sunlight from miles-wide arrays, may be possibilities. Lovelock sounds an alarm in his book that is backed up by evidence and grim prognostication. Gaia will do whatever it needs to establish her equilibrium, equilibrium that’s inherent in the theories of her physics and chemistry, equilibrium that will be newly established even if it means the failure of humanity. As a brief line in an X-Files episode once put it, “You can’t turn your back on nature, or nature will turn her back on you”. It’s simple.