The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning

by James Lovelock

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New York, NY: Basic Books 2009.  278 pp.  Bibliography 4 pp.  $25.00

James Lovelock is the originator of the modern awareness of Gaia as a unitary, living, geobiological entity. He points to serious growing dangers to human survival. Lovelock pulls no punches in confronting us over:

• Ignoring obvious evidence of global heating
• Failing to abide by the precautionary principle that states we must act in the interests of preservation of life and the environment on this planet – rather than exploiting our natural resources to exhaustion and extinction
• Failing to insist that our elected officials heed these warnings rather than voting for the self-interests of the powerful corporate and national interests that dominate our social governmental structures.

Corporate and national self-interests have dominated in political arenas at all levels of government. For instance, the UN has equivocated about the seriousness of the dangers of global heating, producing 'consensus statements' that appear to carry the weight of careful scientific deliberation. Lovelock points out that the opposite is actually the case.

…the words used to express the consequences of global heating were blurred until they were acceptable to representatives from the oil-producing nations, who saw their national interests threatened by the scientific truth. If this is what the UN means by consensus, scientific truth cannot be expected to come from its deliberations, and we are misled about the dangers of global heating. (p. 12)

To facilitate the manipulation of public opinion about global heating, governments and industries are increasingly favoring research based on complex, theoretical computer models for global heating – at the expense of observational research. Computer model analyses are always subject to questioning about their underlying assumptions and processes for assessing the effects of diverse factors on climate change.

Lovelock notes that direct observations are much more difficult to contest – and research to gather data from direct observations is finding decreased funding. He trenchantly observes, "It is said that truth is the first casualty of war, and it seems that this is also true of climate change." (p. 12) We are starting to produce truth in a virtual world instead of discovering it. (p. 114.)

We have experienced a dip in the progression of increasing global temperatures since 2007. Those
who would have us ignore global heating view this as an indication that warnings about its dangers are exaggerated. Lovelock points out that the reverse is true:

…in 2007 the Earth passed a significant milestone when the area of floating Arctic ice that melted in the summer was about 3 million square kilometers greater than usual, an area thirty times larger than England. Despite the heat absorbed, the global temperature did not rise; in fact it fell slightly, perhaps because to melt ice it takes eighty-one times as much heat as to raise the same quantity of water one degree. This property of ice is called its “latent heat.” You can see this yourself by making a near full cup of tea with boiling water. It will be too hot even to sip. Adding cold water to cool it quickly rarely works; but add a single ice cube and it will be cool enough to drink in a few seconds. In a few more years all that floating ice may go, and then the sun will be free to heat the dark Arctic Ocean, No longer will it have the Sisyphean task of trying to melt white, reflecting ice that rejects 80 percent of the sunlight it receives so that to melt it consumes most of the radiant energy that would otherwise warm the ocean. (p. 16-17)

Analyzing the major approaches to reducing global heating, Lovelock favors nuclear power as the most efficient choice. He decries the critics who have obstructed governmental investments in this choice. Nowhere, however, does he address the issues of radioactive pollution that have not found any safe solution as yet.

Much of the countryside has become the site for fields planted with biofuel crops, biogas generators, and industrial-sized wind farms-all this when land is wholly needed to grow food and more importantly to sustain a habitable climate and chemical composition. Don’t feel guilty about opting out of this nonsense: closer examination reveals it as an elaborate scam in the interests of a few nations whose economies are enriched in the short term by the sale of wind turbines, biofuel plants, and other green-sounding energy equipment. Don’t for a moment believe the sales talk that these will save the planet. The salesmen’s pitch refers to the world they know, the urban world. The real Earth does not need saving. It can, will, and always has saved itself, and it is now starting to do so by changing to a state much less favorable for us and other animals. What people mean by the plea is “save the planet as we know it,” and that is now impossible. (p. 19)

Lovelock feels we have passed the point of no return.

…forces now taking the Earth to the hothouse... include the increasing abundance of greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture-gases from natural ecosystems damaged by global heating in the Arctic and the tropics. The vast ocean ecosystems that used to pump down carbon dioxide can no longer do so because the ocean turns to desert as it warms and grows more acidic; then there is the extra absorption of the sun’s radiant heat as white reflecting snow melts and is replaced by dark ground or ocean. Each separate increase adds heat, and together they amplify the warming that we cause. (p. 72)

He points out that carbon dioxide in the breath and ammonia in flatulence of close to 7 billion people plus the same emissions from their pets and livestock account for 23 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. On top of this we produce emissions in growing, distributing and preparing food. All of these add up to close to half of the entire greenhouse gas emissions on our planet. Furthermore, we destroy forests to produce food and other commodities

If just by living with our pets and livestock, we are responsible for nearly half the emissions of carbon dioxide, I do not see how the 60 percent reduction can be achieved without a great loss of life. Like it or not, we are the problem-and as a part of the Earth system. Not as something separate from and above it. (p. 74-5)

Lovelock is skeptical that we are capable of developing solutions to these problems in time to halt or reverse global heating.

Our contemporary industrial civilization is hopelessly unfitted to survival on an overpopulated and under-resourced planet, deluded by the thought that clever inventions and progress will provide the shoehorn that fits us into our imaginary niche. I think it is better we accept and understand how poor the chance of our personal survival is, but take hope from the fact that our species is unusually tough, has survived seven major climate catastrophes in the las million years, and is unlikely to go extinct in the coming climate catastrophe… (p. 81)

Our gravest dangers are not from climate change itself, but indirectly from starvation, competition for space and resources, and war. (p. 31)

…it is hubris to think that we know how to save the Earth: our planet looks after itself. All that we can do is try to save ourselves." (p. 13)

And lovelock is not entirely without hope for redemptive lessons along humanity's path, as a continuing part of Gaia's future. He suggests that humanity may have the capacity to repeat today the responses seen during WWII – where people willingly sacrificed their lifestyles in order to rise to the threats to their survival. " Our obligation as an intelligent species is to survive; and if we can evolve to become an integrated intelligence within Gaia, then together we could survive longer." (p. 97)

This book is a MUST READ for anyone concerned with survival of life as we know it on our planet.

Review by Daniel J. Benor, MD
IJHC Editor in Chief

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