The Revenge of Gaia
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James Lovelock wrote the Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back - and How we Can Still Save Humanity in 2006, at a time when the debate on global warming is receiving widespread attention in society. He believes that it is too late to avoid significant global heating and significant climate change, making much of the Earth's surface much less hospitable for humans. As a result, there will be inevitable, major decline in the human population over the next hundred years.
Because this problem is such an overwhelming, cataclysmic threat, he believes that nuclear fission power is our only short term solution for preserving civilization as we know it. The dangers that environmentalists generally see from nuclear power are quite minor with respect to most of Earth's ecologies; supposedly benign alternate energy sources he sees as inadequate and irrelevant at best.
Lovelock draws a distinction between his original Gaia hypothesis of the 1970s and current, validated Gaia theory.
He believes that the time will come when the US government takes global heating seriously and responds with immense planet-scale engineering fixes, perhaps space based. While he indicates these may succeed, he is despondent by the prospect that humans will have to deal with extra costs of maintaining an inhabitable surface climate, a task formerly done for us by Gaia.
[edit] Climate storm forecast
He thinks the time is past for sustainable development; he thinks 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.
Lovelock provides convincing verifiable facts that persistent multi-media disinformation (about relative human risks of nuclear energy) are driven by global petro economics.
| Fuel | Fatalities | Who | Deaths per terawatt-year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coal | 6400 | Workers | 342 |
| Natural Gas | 1200 | Workers and public | 85 |
| Hydro | 4000 | Public | 883 |
| Nuclear | 31 | Workers | 8 |
[edit] External links
- Richard Mabey reviews The revenge of Gaia (Times Online)
