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The key insight of Gaia Theory is that the entire Earth functions as a single living super-organism. But according to James Lovelock, the theory’s originator, that organism is now sick. It is running a fever born of increased atmospheric greenhouse gases. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but the human race faces a severe test. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from “flipping” into an entirely new equilibrium that will threaten civilization as we know it. But we can do much to save humanity. In the tradition of Silent Spring, this is a call to address a major threat to our collective future.
Tipping Point
| Customer Rating:   | In this clarion call to arms, eminent scientist James Lovelock warns us cogently and eloquently of the impending doom that we have forced upon our planet by global warming. Lovelock is well-qualified to offer such gloomy predictions; it was this extremely versatile scientist who in the 1960s and 70s proposed the idea of Gaia, the notion that the earth is a self-regulating organism whose regulatory mechanisms are intimately coupled to the activities of species in its biosphere. One species- man- has tilted the balance of these mechanisms and thrown them into disarray. The species that will pay the biggest price for this deed is also man himself. Through careful speculation and excellent scientific arguments about details, he rationalized this notion until it has now become widely accepted.
Lovelock's premier argument is that global warming (which he amusingly always refers to as "global heating") has already rendered our planet incapable of the self-regulation that it has admirably demonstrated for millennia. The temperature rises which global warming are going to bring about are beyond those which the earth can endure in a homeostatic manner, and its catastrophic effects are likely going to manifest within decades. There is a horrific precedent for believing this; the same kinds of temperature rises fifty five million years ago led to catastrophic mass extinctions and sea-level rises, inducing an ice age that lasted 200,000 years. We are in danger of inducing such a global pandemic by our efforts right now. The most serious manifestation of man-made global warming is in positive feedback. Two examples suffice; the well-known melting of ice which leads to less reflection of sunlight which leads to more melting, and the heating of the upper layers of the ocean that kills algae. These algae are crucial players in maintaining cooling by the emission of sulfur compounds that serve 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 serving our planet; simultaneously emitting CO2 and depriving the earth of biomass that normally absorbs it.
While the first part of the book describes Gaia and how it's been affected irreversibly by global warming, the second part basically deals with the muddle headed perceptions 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 consisting of organizations like Greenpeace, who have a wrong-headed and irrational perception of environmentalism. They tout phrases like "sustainable development" and "renewables" without really 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 remote parts of the world, while there are organisms much more in need of saving, including the microorganisms and algae which play extremely crucial roles in maintaining the homeostasis of Gaia.
The second group 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 saving a few endangered species in New Guinea is to prevent deforestation and use of more landmass even in developing countries. They know that debate about saving the environment cannot be dictated by emotion. Most importantly they understand that nuclear energy is the best short-term and perhaps long-term solution for our energy needs.
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 going to save us soon enough. The phrase soon enough is important here. Lovelock is a reasonable man and does not discard renewables entirely. The problem is in trying to find good 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 consume huge tracts of land, land on which forestation usually soaks up carbon dioxide, and in addition need back up from fossil fuel generators when the wind is not blowing. Biofuels struggle with maintaining energy balances and pose similar land-use problems. It will be at least 50 years before renewables make a significant contribution to our energy needs and their use becomes cheap and widespread. But by that time it will be too late. The single-most important factor here is time.
The answer is clear and rational; especially for the short term future, nuclear power is the most efficient, readily available, widely-implementable, environment-friendly and safe source of power. Even if the problem 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 hopes fusion will become important soon, fission is currently our best bet. We already have the technology unlike that for renewables. Its efficiency is marvelous- a good numerical argument to keep in mind is this; global CO2 emissions for a year make up a mountain that is a mile in diameter and sixteen miles in height, a behemoth. In contrast all the nuclear fuel providing power for a year will constitute a cube that is sixteen meters on a side. It was Lovelock's espousal for nuclear power that represented a break from the 'green' party line. But now, nuclear is going to be as green as we can think of. To stave off fears of nuclear waste, Lovelock has even offered 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 clearly 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 cogent point that Lovelock makes is about how religious faith has caused problems in enabling our stewardship of the planet. He correctly points out that all religious 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 major world religions put nature before man. Now however, emphasizing man is going to be meaningless unless we emphasize Gaia, because without Gaia we 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 interests 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 good argument against renewables, also makes the strongest argument against libertarian "solutions" to climate change. Libertarians argue that the free market will eventually find solutions to the climate change problem without government intervention. But even if this solution might work in principle, 'eventually' is not going to be soon enough, good enough for us. We may have a little more than 20 years to beat a respectable 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 saved us if we had begun 200 years ago. But now even if these solutions work, they almost certainly will come too late to save us. As they say, "operation successful, but the patient is dead". To save the patient in time, we are going to inevitably have to make compromises, sacrifice at least some of our freedom to large scale government actions. We have to operate now 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 similar scenario.
On the downside. Lovelock makes 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 going to die from are caused by our breathing oxygen. While oxygen certainly can produce free radicals and cause damage, such a significant role should be more firmly supported by evidence.
It is very difficult to find wholesome solutions to climate change. We seem to have now done a good job of 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 pushing for more oil drilling, rapid action and awareness is essential. We have to beat a retreat and live to fight another day, unlike Napoleon in Russia in 1812. For that we need coherent and rational thinking and global fixes, with all the compromises that they might entail. Going nuclear, and perhaps even 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 takes to establish her equilibrium, equilibrium that's inherent in the laws of her physics and chemistry, equilibrium that will be established even if it means the loss of humanity. As a pithy 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. |
The Book of Ought
| Customer Rating: | James Lovelock is one of the most brilliant thinkers alive. Yet The Revenge of Gaia is a book of contradiction. If you read it in public, you will look up and around you wondering, "Why is everyone wasting what precious time we have left?" You will also have to stifle the urge to throw the thing, with its poor scholarship, lack of source material, insistent repetition, and gaps in logic, clear across the room.
Lovelock begins, predictably, with a definition of Gaia, and likens the condition of Gaia to that of a sick body. Lovelock is at his most eloquent here and issues a warning: We may have had time to right our wrongs gradually in the past, but now we no longer have time for gradualness. The sickened state of Gaia will seek a new equilibrium if it can no longer abide its current condition. This means, of course, that civilization might have to go the way of a nasty virus.
It is upon this foundation of urgency and illness that Lovelock prescribes his solution. It is a messy, incomplete and irresponsible one: he advocates a replacement of current energy sources with nuclear power, arguing that it is our only viable alternative to destruction.
Lovelock's arguments against other possible energy sources are important in spirit, but not conclusion. His primary problem with renewable energy is that it is "expensive". Given what we are faced with, why does Lovelock defer to such economic trappings? Perhaps the expense adds what he perceives to be a "get real" dimension to his argument. But it is unrealistic to base our future on the make-believe demands of the current economic system which, after all, has contributed much to this mess in the first place.
Furthermore, such a feeble argument distracts from the actual problems with solar panels, wind, and nuclear power. That is, we need oil to build the alternative energy sources, and the oil just isn't there. Oil dependency in production, plastics, transportation, mining, and so forth makes it unlikely that we shall find an exit door to a world powered by other sources of energy anytime soon. It's wishful thinking to believe that industry and government will give up their routines to supply oil for a cleaner, healthier world. Shortly after September 11th, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "The American way of life is non-negotiable." In the context of resource wars and dwindling oil supply, one can see exactly where this desperate stubbornness emerges from. We are unlikely to divert oil to alternative energy sources because to do so would mean depleting oil from, say, Disneyland.
Lovelock's portrayal of nuclear power is sloppy, and leaves out crucial contextual information. He bolsters his case for nuclear power by writing that it is not actually a health risk. Whether this is true or not is difficult to say, since Lovelock does not source much of his basis for stating this. The mining of uranium is conspicuously absent from The Revenge of Gaia, probably because its inclusion would reveal what a wasteful and polluting process it is, since it is dependent on fossil fuels, including oil. Similarly, the construction of nuclear plants is absent.
Even more notably absent is the uranium extraction processes. Lovelock should have responsibly included this in his book. Since most of the uranium on the planet is in low-grade ores (that is, substances that contain small percentages of uranium), and not in the dwindling sources of high-grade ores, a complicated extraction process is needed.
"...162 tons of natural uranium must be extracted from the earth's crust each year to fuel one nuclear power plant. If the uranium is in granite ore, with a low-grade uranium concentration of 4 grams per ton of rock (0.0004%), then 40 million tons of granite will need to be mined. This rock will need to be ground into fine powder and chemically treated with sulphuric acid and other chemicals to extract the uranium from the rock (milling). Assuming an extraction capacity of 50% (an unrealistically high estimate), 80 million tons of granite will therefore need to be treated...The extraction of uranium from this granite rock would consume over thirty times the energy generated in the reactor from the extracted uranium." (p. 7-8, H. Caldicott, Nuclear Power is Not the Answer, New York, 2006. The New Press)
Lovelock's ignorance of context puts him in the Wired magazine crowd - those who optimistically praise technological innovation without acknowledging social, economic, environmental, or political considerations.
Scientists, particularly British ones, are often fond of stating that "is doesn't mean ought." In other words, "this is just the way it is, I wish it weren't this way." But the same scientists that make such is/ought divisions are nearly always proscriptive in the social realm. Lovelock's sense of how things are deeply derails his judgment. He calls "fancy birds and cuddly animals" (i.e. rainforest dwellers) "dandies...doing little of the hard work needed to keep Gaia going." (p. 111) He uses this as an excuse for burying nuclear waste beneath the floor of rainforests! This is a bit like a wealthy congressman accusing single mothers of abusing welfare. These "fancy" plants and animals are expressions of and key players in vital ecosystems. Would that western humanity could say the same. Lovelock has written a grand book of ought, framing it as a book of is. His tone is imperative and pretends to be sober. But we ought not extract uranium, store radioactive waste in the rainforest, or forget that all organisms have their own purposes, lives, and desires separate from our own.
We find in Lovelock's recommendations his Eurocentric, anthropocentric views distilled for us. Basically, people who have caused a grave imbalance in Gaian regulation should stop worrying about the human and non-human beings that can't assist in a technological fix for the problem. Western civilization needs to take care of itself only, because most other beings of the planet (with the exception, perhaps, of bacteria), aren't going to do any work like westerners to rebalance the planet. It's pure utilitarianism.
This view is echoed again and again in Lovelock's ignorance and disregard for non-western cultures. Lovelock happily champions the meadows of England against what appears to me to be his fabricated enemies, the rabid, power-hungry, windpower lobby. If windpower activists and corporations have their way, Lovelock would not be able to take walks in the countryside or manicured yards. One wonders where he thinks uranium will come from. Since over one half of uranium deposits are under Navajo and Pueblo tribal land (H. Caldicott, p. 48), the destruction of indigenous land is guaranteed if Lovelock's advice is followed. Lovelock hasn't thought about or doesn't care about this as much as he does well-trimmed lawns. There are other dark shades here of anti-indigenous sentiment, particularly when Lovelock insists that "tribal behavior is surely written in the language of our genetic code" (p. 9 - evidence, please?), and then immediately makes the not-so-logical jump that tribal behavior is the cause of genocide.
If Lovelock would do more research on indigenous peoples, he would see that many indigenous societies were less destructive and more egalitarian then our own. He hasn't done his research, and speculates toward the end of the book that Australian aboriginies "destroyed the natural forests of the Australian continent". He offers no suggestions as to how the aboriginies are now so adapted to desert living, nor how they survived for tens of thousands of years with an apparently unbroken culture after having so traumatically destroyed their landscape. We have something to learn from these cultures about how to live without destroying our environment and landbase utterly.
Part of the lesson is that we should NOT seek to preserve civilization as it is. No matter what form of power we use, if we continue to consume, dominate, and pollute the world, we are doomed.
Tyler Volk, in his review of The Revenge of Gaia for Nature, griped that Lovelock was pushing the Gaia metaphor too hard, and that doing so wouldn't help us out of our predicament, it would only confuse us and misguide our science. But this criticism strikes me also as woefully misguided. Of all the things to choose from, why did Volk have issue with the idea that the Earth was alive?
Both James Lovelock and Tyler Volk are incorrect in their assessments of Gaia. Volk argues that Lovelock's metaphor has gone too far, and thus becomes not useful for understanding climate change. Lovelock argues that the Gaia metaphor helps us to understand environmental problems on a larger scale. Both are wrong in assuming that Gaia is a metaphor at all. They characterize Gaia is something somehow separate from its parts, and thus fall into an odd monotheism. For them, Gaia is an angry God, detached from its components. But what is Gaia if not the very earthworms and bacteria, birds of paradise and tree kangaroos, algal blooms and granite, westerners and indigenous? Gaia is a hidden awareness that evinces itself through the actions of all its parts, and emerges through weather, climate, salinity, clouds, atmospheric gasses.
It is precisely the intentionality of Gaia that will lead us to better mediation of science and everyday action. Since dull, dead functionalism and reduction has led us down this destructive path, it is a view of the world as animate that will lead us out. It is necessary to understand Gaia by abandoning our reductionism - whether it be a reduction to chemicals, metaphors, or planets - and instead see Gaia present in every living thing. By doing this, we will finally be able to understand both the whole and the parts without reduction. It is also necessary to abandon the fantasy that industrial culture can ever hope to live in accordance with Gaia and to abandon the dream of sustaining unsustainable industrial culture by imposing a hopeless, dangerous, and thoughtless stopgap. We must change our perception of the is. Then, maybe, the ought will change as well.
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The Revenge of Lovelock - Me, Myself & I
| Customer Rating: | For all his impressive curriculum, Mr. Lovelock seems much more interested here in vindicating his achievements than in advancing his views on the future of Nature.
He has got some very interesting arguments and reasonings, but the value of the book is terribly depleted by his simplifications and deliberate obscuring of reality, if not worse. Such a well informed scientist must be aware of many of the mendacities he slips in his books (like his gross misinterpretation of mortality due to nuclear radiation statistics) but he seems to chose effect over truth, probably in the name of the greater good of Gaia.
What he doesn't like he rejects peremptorily. (wind mills breaking the verticality of air????) But only an Englishman would suggest to substitute synthetic stuff for real food. We know it doesn't make a hell of a difference in the Islands but what about us, the rest of humans.
The problem with this kind of illuminated scientists is that they are virtual dictators. They know better than the world and anyway, there's no time for discussion, so everybody do like I say. If I was wrong, well, there was nothing to loose, you were all doomed, anyway. And you will be better off with a few simplified facts I'll provide you with than having to think by yourselves.
Considering his shameless bragging about the importance of his doublessly great inventions, one is tempted to think that his pronuclear stance is only his way to be (even) more épatant.
Anyway, the book has rich food for thought and simplification does have some merits, so there go three stars for the short gentleman at the back yes, the one with the white hair. |
Revenge of Gaia
| Customer Rating: | | This book was bought for my husband. He liked it very much. He had borrowed it from the library and wanted his own copy. |
Lovelock's Disease
| Customer Rating: | | Bad science incorrect facts and statistics underpinned by the ludicrous Gaia hypothesis . Luckily I will be around to see that he will be as wrong about the nature , magnitude and likely future impacts of Global Warming as he was in the 1970's about Global Cooling . A complete waste of money ! |
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