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The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. James Lovelock. Basic Books, 2006. Hardcover, $25.00.
Climate change and global heating were just faint shadows on our horizon only a few years ago. Now our perception of the future is changing radically with the daily news of melting ice caps and rising carbon dioxide levels. These questions are becoming critical: what’s really going to happen to the earth’s climate and what should we do?
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just released its latest report on climate change (on April 6th) and already it has generated controversy because the U.S. government and others forced the scientists authoring the report to tone down or edit out some of its most serious warnings and predictions. See the IPCC website for information at http://www.ipcc.ch/. Another very useful site to visit is RealClimate: http://www.realclimate.org/.
While most scientists agree that the earth will be profoundly affected by upcoming climate changes, they are still assessing the timing and the extent of the impact. We are just beginning the process of understanding and accepting the significance of these changes as individuals and as communities.
Reading James Lovelock’s book, The Revenge of Gaia was a challenging experience, as I absorbed his perspective and attempted to come to terms with what he says. The book is quite readable, but it’s also provocative.
Lovelock, the scientist who originated Gaia Theory, has one of the most drastic views of what is going to happen as a result of current climate change trends. In his book he states that it’s now too late to prevent the earth from passing very soon into “a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years.” He says that we’ve past the point of no return and that global heating is in an accelerating feedback loop. He believes that sometime within this century, much of the earth will become uninhabitable and that basically the human race will become reduced to “a few breeding pairs in the Arctic.”
The book generated much talk when it came out last year because of these statements and because of Lovelock’s view on what we must do in the face of crisis. Lovelock espouses the use of nuclear power to prevent “the lights from going out” on civilization. He believes that nuclear power is the only energy option efficient enough to provide a slower transition to a world where so much that we’ve taken for granted has vanished.
Lovelock sees development and progress as a catastrophic way to relate to the earth. He writes that most of human history reflects a war on Gaia, a war in which we attempt to increase our domination of the natural world and make it serve our interests. The destructiveness we’ve wrought has destabilized the regulatory systems of the earth and the result is our own destruction and that of our habitat. He further argues that so much of what the Greens and other environmentalists envision as sustainable development is really a continuation of this short-sighted perspective. In his view, we have passed a time where we can consider any kind of development and growth. We must now embark on a retreat, giving up the idea of economic growth, though Lovelock envisions a sustainable retreat. He wishes to minimize the problems we will encounter in feeding people by creating synthetic food, for example. He also envisions the possibility of setting up massive screens in space that would shield the earth from some of the warming that is about to become so lethal.
Lovelock is opposed to the use of wind power because the turbines destroy the natural countryside and, he believes, cannot generate enough power efficiently. He thinks other sources like solar power also suffer from lack of cost-effectiveness and efficiency.
It is interesting and, to me, disturbing to see that nuclear power is being given renewed consideration again by many governments and utilities, and arguments advanced by Lovelock are among them. Lovelock argues that the actual evidence for low level radiation creating health and environmental problems in places like Chernobyl flies in the face of accepted thinking, because there isn’t any real evidence of these problems. He says that isolation of Chernobyl and the surrounding countryside after the accident has actually proved to be of great benefit to the environment. Because humans have shunned this area it is a now flourishing wildlife refuge. I admit that I found some of what Lovelock said about low level radiation to be potentially plausible, or at least open to greater investigation. I think it would be wonderful, if true, that radioactive contamination turns out to not have such terrifying impact on the life. Lovelock cites sources for a lack of environmental problems at Chernobyl and also even at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where he argues, the rate of cancers in the population that survived direct atomic war is only a small percent above that of other unaffected populations in Japan. But in spite of Lovelock’s arguments, I’m not convinced that nuclear power is a good choice. The time and cost associated with building nuclear power plants seems a significant obstacle and the risk of terrible misuse of nuclear energy for weapons cannot easily be discounted, especially in a chaotic time. I’ve read encouraging news about wind and solar power lately that causes me to think that Lovelock is too dismissive of these sources of energy.
What Lovelock wants to do is prevent massive suffering as the earth systems and resources we’ve depended on suddenly begin to collapse and he sees the strategy he outlines as the only really effective way to do that.
The biggest problem I have with Lovelock’s thinking is the contradiction between what he says is the human war on Gaia and the kinds of solutions he proposes, which are essentially technological and really require the use of the resources of large corporations and governments. He envisions dividing land into three equal areas: one for human living space; one for growing crops; and the last area reserved for regenerating the natural world, the organ systems of Gaia. While in many ways this is an admirable concept, it also seems to require the use of force to begin such a system and to maintain it. It raises the issue of what management we accept as the price for salvaging some of the human and natural world.
Lovelock seems focused on these large-scale, resource-intensive solutions as the only way to prevent catastrophe. He doesn’t really discuss ways whereby individuals can find or be empowered to make changes, to create solutions on a smaller scale, because, it seems, it is too late for such incremental sorts of change. Thus there is no concept of economic or social transformation except on the most drastic top-end level, which is perhaps the most disturbing and disempowering aspect of the book.
Is Lovelock right about the extent and timing of climate change? Well, on one level perhaps we should simply act as if it’s true. But it can also be a call for transformation in our way of life that’s undertaken by each of us. If climate change is as catastrophic as Lovelock predicts, then it is just as important to provide a path of individual and community action. I was very impressed with Stephan Harding’s view in Animate Earth of service to Gaia. If being in service to the greater good of the planet and to the life on it is primary, no matter what the outcome, then I think we can begin to be at peace with Gaia. This means letting go of belief in control. We focus on a life of positive actions and greater balance here and now. I think there is also hope for a meaningful future in this giving. We live in ways that give back to the human and other communities we are an intrinsic and inescapable part of. This is the role of humans as stewards of the garden, our home.
For a brief summation of some of Lovelock’s views as expressed in The Revenge of Gaia, see this article he wrote at http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-lovelock200106.htm.
