Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on our abuse of the environment

[Hakluyt]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article338879.ece

Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on our abuse of the environment

By Michael McCarthy
Published: 16 January 2006

With anyone else, you would not really take it seriously: the proposition that because of climate change, human society as we know it on this planet may already be condemned, whatever we do. It would seem not just radical, but outlandish, mere hyperbole. And we react against it instinctively: it seems simply too sombre to be countenanced.

But James Lovelock, the celebrated environmental scientist, has a unique perspective on the fate of the Earth. Thirty years ago he conceived the idea that the planet was special in a way no one had ever considered before: that it regulated itself, chemically and atmospherically, to keep itself fit for life, as if it were a great super-organism; as if, in fact, it were alive.

The complex mechanism he put forward for this might have remained in the pages of arcane geophysical journals had he continued to refer to it as "the biocybernetic universal system tendency".

But his neighbour in the village of Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding (who wroteLord of The Flies), suggested he christen it after the Greek goddess of the Earth; and Gaia was born.

Gaia has made Professor Lovelock world famous, but at first his fame was in an entirely unexpected quarter. Research scientists, who were his original target audience, virtually ignored his theory.

To his surprise, it was the burgeoning New Age and environmental movements who took it up - the generation who had just seen the first pictures of the Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts, the shimmering pastel-blue sphere hanging in infinite black space, fragile and vulnerable, but our only home. They seized on his metaphor of a reinvented Mother Earth, who needed to be revered and respected - or else.

It has been only gradually that the scientific establishment has become convinced of the essential truth of the theory, that the Earth possesses a planetary control system, founded on the interaction of living organisms with their environment, which has operated for billions of years to allow life to exist, by regulating the temperature, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, even the salinity of the seas.

But accepted it is, and now (under the term Earth System Science) it has been subsumed into the scientific mainstream; two years ago, for example, Nature, the world's premier scientific journal, gave Professor Lovelock two pages to sum up recent developments in it.

Yet now too, by a savage irony, it is Gaia that lies behind his profound pessimism about how climate change will affect us all. For the planetary control system, he believes, which has always worked in our favour, will now work against us. It has been made up of a host of positive feedback mechanisms; now, as the temperature starts to rise abnormally because of human activity, these will turn harmful in their effect, and put the situation beyond our control.

To give just a single example out of very many: the ice of the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast it is likely to be gone in a few decades at most. Concerns are already acute about, for example, what that will mean for polar bears, who need the ice to live and hunt.

But there is more. For when the ice has vanished, there will be a dark ocean that absorbs the sun's heat, instead of an icy surface that reflects 90 per cent of it back into space; and so the planet will get even hotter still.

Professor Lovelock visualises it all in the title of his new book, The Revenge of Gaia. Now 86, but looking and sounding 20 years younger, he is by nature an optimistic man with a ready grin, and it felt somewhat unreal to talk calmly to him in his Cornish mill house last week, with a coffee cup to hand and birds on the feeder outside the study window, about such a dark future. You had to pinch yourself.

He too saw the strangeness of it. "I'm usually a cheerful sod, so I'm not happy about writing doom books," he said. "But I don't see any easy way out."

His predictions are simply based on the inevitable nature of the Gaian system.

"If on Mars, which is a dead planet, you doubled the CO2, you could predict accurately what the temperature would rise to," he said.

"On the Earth, you can't do it, because the biota [the ensemble of life forms] reacts. As soon as you pump up the temperature, everything changes. And at the moment the system is amplifying change. "So our problem is that anything we do, like increasing the carbon dioxide, mucking about with the land, destroying forests, farming too much, things like that - they don't just produce a linear increase in temperature, they produce an amplified increase in temperature.

"And it's worse than that. Because as you approach one of the tipping points, the thresholds, the extent of amplification rapidly increases and tends towards infinity.

"The analogy I use is, it's as if we were in a pleasure boat above the Niagara Falls. You're all right as long as the engines are going, and you can get out of it. But if the engines fail, you're drawn towards the edge faster and faster, and there's no hope of getting back once you've gone over - then you're going down.

"And the uprise is just like that, the steep jump of temperature on Earth. It is exactly like the drop in the Falls."

Professor Lovelock's unique viewpoint is that he is just not looking at this or that aspect of the Earth's climate, as are other scientists; he is looking at the whole planet in terms of a different discipline, control theory.

"Most scientists are not trained in control theory. They follow Descartes, and they think that everything can be explained if you take it down to its atoms, and then build it up again.

"Control theory looks at it in a very different way. You look at whole systems and how do they work. Gaia is very much about control theory. And that's why I spot all these positive feedbacks."

I asked him how he would sum up the message of his new book. He said simply: "It's a wake-up call.''

[Hakluyt]

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece

James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years

Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can

Published: 16 January 2006

Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.

Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.

This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.

The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.

Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.

Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.

Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.

By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.

To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.

My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.

Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.

So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.

Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.

We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.

We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.

The writer is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society. 'The Revenge of Gaia' is published by Penguin on 2 February

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Fission for the future
>By Fiona Harvey
>Published: January 27 2006 18:34 | Last updated: January 27 2006 18:34
>>

THE REVENGE OF GAIA
>by James Lovelock
>Allen Lane £16.99, 177 pages

The Gaia hypothesis sees Earth - its rocks, seas and atmosphere - and the microbes, plants and animals that inhabit it, as one whole system that regulates itself in such a way as to optimise the chances of it continuing. It made James Lovelock, the theory’s originator in the late 1960s, the darling of much of the environmental movement, even though it exposed him to ridicule from fellow scientists who disliked the idea’s whiff of mysticism.

Now Lovelock has updated his ideas with The Revenge of Gaia. For years, Gaia was an idea in search of an application. With global warming, that application has been found. The burning of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, which heats the planet, eventually inundating half the world as glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and desert spreads. The Revenge of Gaia starkly sets out the prospects for the end of life within a few generations: “We are tough, and it would take more than the predicted climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans; what is at risk is civilisation.” Gaia does not need us, and if humanity acts in a way that harms the rest of the system, Gaia will destroy us.

This book will enrage environmentalists and attract some unlikely supporters; it will be dismissed as romanticised ravings by both the greens and the “hard” scientists, and feted by industrialists and politicians of the most anti-mystical, and anti-green, hue. Lovelock sets out a cogent, detailed, plea for the immediate and immense expansion of nuclear power. He says fission offers the best hope of averting cataclysmic climate change without undoing the industrial revolution, because it produces power without the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels.

These are not new thoughts from Lovelock: he has published numerous articles in recent years saying much the same thing. But Lovelock, or his publisher, has timed this book for maximum impact. Within the next few months, the UK government is expected to take the controversial decision to call for a new generation of nuclear power plants. Many Labour MPs oppose such a move, arguing that the disadvantages of nuclear power - toxic waste, the possibility of terrorist attack - outweigh its pluses. The Liberal Democrats are also vehemently anti-nuclear, and though most Conservative politicians fall into the pro-nuclear lobby, the new leader David Cameron has green leanings.

Building a nuclear power plant on an existing site does not need new legislation, but the government would face outrage if it tried to encourage construction without some form of debate. Most voters are believed to be neutral on the issue, ready to be swayed either way. So the provocative timing and title of this work are clear attempts to influence the debate.

Lovelock himself is a fascinating figure, and a scientist of long and impeccable pedigree. A medical researcher by training, he went on to work with Nasa in the 1960s and invented the electron capture detector, a key instrument in chemical analysis. He is a fellow of the Royal Society, recipient of numerous prizes and doctorates, and author of more than 200 scientific papers. As this book demonstrates, at the age of 86, he is a powerful thinker and an elegant writer.

But for all his weighty credentials, The Revenge of Gaia falls short of Lovelock’s clear intentions. Though persuasive in many passages, it is unlikely to change many minds, and will instead be taken up by people with firmly entrenched views on the environment.

To argue on one page that our planet is in imminent danger of destruction and, on the next, to object to wind turbines on the grounds that they spoil the view, stretches credibility beyond breaking point. To spend considerable energy highlighting the (real) threat of a terrorist attack on cross-continental gas pipelines while dismissing in one line the terrorist threat to nuclear power plants is irresponsible. “It is true that plutonium is a poisonous element and there is always a risk that it may be stolen to make nuclear weapons,” says Lovelock cheerfully, failing to acknowledge the extent of that threat.

Lovelock refers several times to humanity as “tribal”, and therefore given to war. But he spares no thought to the possible consequences of that tribalism if unstable nations get hold of nuclear technology.

He also airily waves away the problem that global stocks of easily mined uranium would soon be exhausted by the fleets of new nuclear plants that he envisages, and he suggests that granite be used instead. He provides no costing for this conjuring. In contrast, expense looms large in solutions that he does not favour - wind farms and solar panels. These will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but they are “expensive” and “not sensible”.

In advocating nuclear fission, Lovelock emphasises that he does not see it as a long-term answer. Once we have solved the immediate problem of greenhouse gas emissions, Lovelock suggests fission power stations should be retired in favour of nuclear fusion, a truly clean form of power. The breathing space given to us by fission would also allow the development of other renewable energy sources. But this seems as naive and romantic as the notions of the environmentalists that he attacks. If we rely on nuclear power, we risk choking off all significant investment into research on renewables.

This book is intended to be an explosive contribution to the nuclear debate. And Lovelock does a lot of good in debunking some fears: for instance, he finds that the real consequences of the Chernobyl accident were much less dire than predicted. He is also excellent on our contradictory and irrational approach to the risks from certain chemicals.

Significantly, Lovelock is right that environmentalists urgently need to re-examine their opposition to nuclear power. If the problem of climate change is so potentially catastrophic, can’t nuclear power provide at least part of the answer? What if new technology means the amount of nuclear waste is a fraction of current levels - does that make it more palatable? If we eschew nuclear, is it really possible to make the energy efficiency gains environmentalists claim, and can renewable energy sources generate sufficient power for our needs? What we need in the forthcoming nuclear debate is a contribution from the green side that honestly and impartially tackles these questions, by someone brave and - like Lovelock - with the stature to ensure they are listened to.

But the inconsistencies and omissions of Lovelock’s polemic mean that, unfortunately, this book is not going to do it.

Fiona Harvey is the FT’s environment correspondent.