Our earth is not in good shape.
Afflicting the planet is not only climate change as we see and feel it, discernible by droughts, heat and a sea that is rising as the ice caps melt at an alarming rate, with astounding losses in the summer of 2007. As though this wasn’t unnerving enough, there is the changing chemistry of the air and oceans, and a growing acidic sea.
A scientist who is not optimistic is James Lovelock whose 1979 book Gaia: a new look at life on earth proposed that the earth is a living, breathing, self-regulating organism that, if we continue to offend and trouble its existence, may just flick us off the way we might flick off an annoying fly. Since the original publication Lovelock has relentlessly refined his arguments in six additional books on the Gaia idea, the two most recent being The Revenge of Gaia(2006), and The Vanishing Face of Gaia: a final warning (2009). In his most recent book Lovelock writes, “The Earth, in its but not our interests, may be forced to move to a hot epoch, one where it can survive, although in a diminished and less habitable state. If, as is likely, this happens, we will have been the cause.”
It was Lovelock’s neighbour, novelist William Golding (Lord of the Flies), who suggested he refer to his startling idea as Gaia. Golding told Lovelock that a big idea deserved a big name. In Greek mythology the beginning was called Chaos, a shapeless abyss, out of which emerged Gaia, the mother of the earth. The 17th century philosopher Spinoza can be seen as foreshadowing Lovelock’s Gaia insights, suggesting that all of nature including inanimate objects such as rocks, should be seen as integral to the cosmos, which work together to maintain the overall integrity of the whole. Lovelock’s Gaia theory is the view that the earth is a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere all bound together as an evolving system. The theory has a goal: to regulate surface conditions in order that they always be as favourable for life as possible.
A good example of how the idea of Gaia works is rock weathering. From our timescale perspective mountains last a very long time and are for us, permanent features of the landscape. In Gaian time however mountains do not last very long and are worn away by the weather. Frost cracks mountain rocks, they are abraded by sand blown by the wind, and dissolved by rain. This grinding down of mountains by rainwater is what geochemists refer to as ‘chemical rock weathering.’ The process is one where rainwater containing dissolved carbon dioxide reacts with mountain rock to make water-soluble calcium bicarbonate. This solution ultimately reaches the ocean (a sink for carbon dioxide) carried there by streams and rivers. Bacteria and algae on the rock faces of mountains increase the rate of rock weathering and hence the removal of carbon dioxide. This is one of the mechanisms of our alive planet for keeping the earth cool and is a component of Gaia’s self-regulation.
Lovelock repeatedly tells us that it is sheer hubris to think we know how to save the earth. It is crucial to realize that the earth has not evolved just for our benefit. The earth as a living system knows how to look after itself. It does not need saving. It has always saved itself and is now starting to do just that by changing to a state that is not very favourable for us, a hot state. All we can hope to do is to save ourselves.
Lovelock has little use for many of the renewable energy schemes now materializing. Soon he observes, with great skepticism, much of the land available and wholly needed for growing food and for sustaining a livable climate will be taken up by fields planted with biofuel crops (“one of the most harmful acts of all”), biogas generators, and industrial-sized wind farms. Ignoring the Gaia account has resulted in over 1,000 of the world’s most acclaimed climate scientists being unable, over a 17-year period, to predict the climate of today. Most of these climatologists, says Lovelock, have based their predictions on faulty climate models that there will be a smooth, completely predictable curving rise of temperature. However the Gaia notion of a live and responsive earth suggests that it is much more likely that sudden unpredictable change awaits us. It is important to understand, Lovelock cautions us, that the “real Earth changes by fits and starts with spells of constancy, even slight decline, between the jumps to greater heat.”
It is too late to reverse global heating, Lovelock argues, by thinking all we need to do is to reduce the burning of fossil-fuels, overall energy use and to cut back the relentless destruction of natural forests. The reason for this pessimism is that climate change can and does happen faster than we can respond. He points to the Kyoto agreement made more than 10 years ago and the fact that despite all the promises little really has been done to halt climate change. It’s discouraging that Canada is one of the worst offenders in not measuring up to its original commitments.
With the Copenhagen climate change meeting imminent it is essential that those meeting there at least start to see our plight from a Gaian point of view. If we continue to fail to see the earth as alive and responsive we will also fail to fully see how much disapproval is currently being expressed by the earth of our damaging environmental practices. Even as the meetings take place Gaia will be relentlessly moving toward a hot state to save herself. If to save herself she needs to get rid of humanity she will surely flick us off.
The writer is a professor of social work at King’s University College.