Book Review: The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock

Global warming was little more than a rumour in 1979, when James Lovelock first advanced the Gaia hypothesis. According to his once-scorned, now scientifically credited theory, which he named after the Greek earth goddess, our planet behaves like a living organism: it is a self-regulating system whose geology and life-forms have together evolved a way of maintaining a climate congenial to life. Now 86, Lovelock has applied Gaia to climate change. His predictions are dire: he argues that, in the near future, the human dependence on fossil fuels will lead to the collapse of the systems that have kept earth habitable. But for Lovelock, unlike many environmentalists, climate change is not primarily a matter of man destroying the planet. The earth will survive, he argues, but it may have to evict us to do so.Lovelock’s elaboration of Gaia theory provide the best bits of the book. He provides many insights into life’s connections. Why do mammals get rid of toxic urea by urinating – an extravagant use of water and energy – when it might much more easily be metabolised into gaseous nitrogen? Because, says Lovelock, that would make nitrogen less available to plant life. In like fashion, he suggests that plants and mammals co-evolved in ways that benefited each other. But Lovelock’s real concern here is with the coming storm. These sections read like apocalyptic science fiction, predicting rising water levels, rocketing temperatures, crop failures, human migrations, and a devastated earth ruled by brutal warlords.

However, this is not a book to consult on the precise science of climate change nor should we necessarily succumb to Lovelock’s pessimism. On the other hand, he vividly dramatises the scale of the problem now faced, and his radical evaluation of what ought to be done now should be required reading. Environmentalists will be horrified by his conclusions, since he is sharply dismissive of organic farming, biofuel, wind and solar energy. He argues that our only hope lies in high technology: nuclear power, the capture of carbon emissions, even giant reflectors in space, and synthetic foods. The Revenge of Gaia is a riveting and troubling work by a true scientific visionary.