This is about a book I've read recently...one that I feel is an important and thought-provoking text. The book is The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate in Crisis and the Fate of Humanity by James Lovelock. I am writing this for two reasons: perhaps to spur others to consider reading it and to provide background information for these two related articles:
About the Book
While the title of this book sounds like a sensationalist doomsday tale, this book is instead a factual and mostly objective (though not entirely) discussion about our Earth's current climatic trajectory. James Lovelock is an excellent author and I'll compare him to Stephen Hawking: both are brilliant scientists and both have an ability to explain mind-numbingly complex concepts with eloquence. In it, James Lovelock discusses Gaia which is, as he says, "a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system" (Page 162). He speaks in detail about Gaia's history and her tendency to regulate her environment and he proposes many logical and sometimes astounding ways that humanity might prepare for impending catastrophe (global warming in this case). Lovelock also makes some rough predictions about how humanity might fare in the coming century and beyond as Gaia makes much-needed adjustments to the type and distribution of life on Earth.
Gaia is a theory which has gained significant momentum in the past three decades and yes, James Lovelock uses the pronoun, "her", when speaking of Gaia. He personifies her purposefully and believes that doing so helps our understanding of this intricate system – we must think of it as a single living and breathing life form. This life form in Lovelock's theory has a goal which is to regulate itself to be "as favourable as possible for contemporary life" (Page 162). This implies that Gaia – our Earth and its everything – is trying very hard to make us and all species very comfortable while we're here.
Mr. Lovelock speaks of Gaia with affection and concern however; and it so happens he's very concerned now about Gaia's health and, like a physician discussing a patient, explains that Gaia is currently suffering the early symptoms of a terrible fever. This analogy is a logical one if you accept Gaian theory – the notion of a single Earth-system wherein all the living and non-living things are interconnected like the individual cells within our own bodies. This fever, Lovelock explains, will last a long time and Gaia might pull through it and recover; but we may not. In the preface of the book he says:
"The climate centers around the world, which are the equivalent of pathology labs in hospitals, 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 longs as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as intimate members of the Earth's family, that civilization is in grave danger.
Without our realizing it we may have poisoned the earth by our emissions of greenhouse gases and weakened it by taking for farmland and housing the land that once was the home of ecosystems that sustained the environment. We have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human time scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up." (Page xiii.)
As Mr. Lovelock explains, Gaia regulates its climate by any and all means. Forests may be entirely burned or flooded; water and winds might redistribute plant species as necessary; life forms may be sacrificed entirely to provide for others; mountains might be washed away as she sees fit; volcanoes might form new lands where they're needed. She may also turn her poles white with ice to reflect the suns rays and keep the planet cool; she might colour her skin with pigments to absorb heat in specific areas (like the dark green forests and dark blue oceans); and she might distribute algae across the oceans' surfaces to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These are the kinds of mechanisms Gaia uses to regulate the Earth's climate and, as Lovelock believes, she does this to make Earth habitable for whatever combination of organisms slither, crawl, walk or swim on her in any given era.
Speaking of eras then, by studying ice cores and other data to understand a long-range record of Earth's history, Lovelock explains that Gaia tends to enjoy either of two different climatic states: glacial or inter-glacial. Earth's climate has seemed to flip-flop between these two extremes. Though, they aren't so extreme at all as the deviation in global temperatures between those frozen and thawed states is only about 5 degrees Celsius -- I know I'd heard and read that before somewhere, but Mr. Lovelock puts it so succinctly. Earth has also suffered huge fluctuations in carbon dioxide concentration in its atmosphere -- as low as a few parts per-million and above 500 parts per-million though studies apparently suggest that life on Earth's surface declines abruptly at that high a concentration . (The atmosphere currently hosts 380 carbon dioxide parts per-million and apparently has risen from 180 in the past century.)
The impact that human civilization has had is most visible on land where we've raped the forests (obviously the Amazon, but also in Canada and elsewhere to make room for crop farming and big agribusiness) and configured our cities (usually in the most vulnerable coastlines and alongside lakes and rivers). There are a number of ways that civilization might have developed but ours has developed in such a way to hit Gaia where it's most likely to hurt. If you consider Earth's most powerful ecosystems like lakes and oceans, forests, grasslands, and tundra, we're guilty of abusing all of them. These are the systems which Gaia requires to regulate herself and, with data showing that the atmosphere's composition is changing dramatically, Lovelock explains that anything she can do to adjust herself is bound to have detrimental impact on human colonies.
But more...Lovelock further describes the notion of "positive feedback". This term implies a kind of cause and effect which behaves like a feedback loop -- each effect amplifies the next. Imagine, for example, a simple problem: the Earth is getting gradually and globally warmer. Perhaps this is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air. The effect of this is the gradual increase in global temperatures. This warmth causes the next symptom to occur: the ice starts to melt in the North and South poles. No problem for the Earth…normally Gaia would produce more algae on the surface of the ocean to absorb more of the greenhouse gases and let the heat dissipate. Except that we've diluted the ocean with Mercury which hinders the algae. The ice continues to melt away and causes sea levels to rise. Not a problem for Earth but this is a huge problem for us as a majority of our population live along coastlines. As large populations relocate further inland they destroy forest and grassland to make room for housing. These forests and grassland were being used efficiently to filter or retain water, host insects, and exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen -- all of this increases the concentration of greenhouse gases in the air which amplifies the problems further. Soon enough, the global temperatures and sea levels have risen, the ice sheets have melted (remember that these used to reflect sunlight but the darker ocean colour now absorbs heat), and carbon dioxide continues to choke us. This frightening scenario is, Lovelock argues, very similar to what is actually happening and while any one of the problems would be a walk in the park for a resilient system like Gaia, we've disabled many of her defence mechanisms.
Considering this scenario and a host of large-scale problems then, Lovelock supposes that humanity should prepare for a very rough ride. One of the ways we must prepare is to ensure that we have a reliable source of electricity. The specific 'why' he has focused on electricity aren't important (though likely obvious); what is important is that we cannot continue to generate electricity as we have in the past. Fossil fuels are simply awful and terribly inefficient. He suggests instead that humanity needs to embrace nuclear fission -- and fast.
With all of this, and always with apparent compassion for both humanity and for Gaia, Lovelock makes these messages very clear:
- Gaia is undergoing significant change -- and beyond an unknown threshold Earth may abruptly become a very unwelcoming place for our species. The phrase "billions will die" occured a few times through the book. Yet his tone and obvious authority on the subject has made me earnestly consider that as a possible consequence.
- It's probable that Gaia will survive her next era, but there's a not-insignificant chance that Earth might soon (many thousands of years) become a dead planet unable to self-regulate and unable to sustain life.
- We are not responsible for Gaia's current shift towards a warmer global climate -- as its possible that Earth was bound for such a climate (or an new ice-age) on its own accord -- but despite all our best intentions we are likely responsible for pushing Gaia into the deep end when she probably would have preferred to go gradually.
- And, not least, the only hope we have as a civilization to sustain ourselves in any significant quantity is to ensure we have a reliable and efficient source of electricity -- and a lot of it.
James Lovelock raises a few other points as well, but the above shortlist were the most compelling to me. Perhaps it is the language and tone which Lovelock writes or perhaps the simple ways he explains then illustrates the large-scale and scientific study of the global climate but after reading this text I am sufficiently convinced that he's probably correct.