The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back and How We Can Still Save Humanity [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

It's common knowledge that our planet's in trouble. The number of books and articles testifying to this condition are almost beyond counting. Lovelock himself acknowledges that there will be dismay at the appearance of "another book on global warming". Lovelock's approach, however, is a departure from the other offerings on this topic. Having postulated the Earth as an organic whole, he can address the problem as a physician. There will be diagnosis and analysis of symptoms. There will also be some suggested therapy. Like many medicines, his prescriptions will be unpalatable to many.

Lovelock diagnoses the Earth as suffering from a fever. Its atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are rising. The infecting agent is a complex organism that has emerged only recently in Earth's history, although it spread rapidly. It's Homo sapiens - ourselves. Humans have usurped woods and prairies, cutting down forests and turning rangeland into farms for our sustainance. Although we declare these transformations are necessary to our survival, the changes have fatally disrupted the Earth's fine balance among land, sea and air. To Lovelock, that balance is a natural system. He's named the system "Gaia" from ancient Greek mythology. Although the "Gaia" concept has its critics, from doubtful to severe, Lovelock has convinced most scientists that the interaction of many elements must be viewed as tightly integrated. What affects one part will surely influence another - or many. And the effect is incalcuable. In this case the effect appears to be terminal. Which means if "Gaia" dies, the living things on this world will go with it. That means us. Gaia's revenge will be to exterminate her affliction.

Lovelock's aim is to protect Gaia. To achieve this, he prescribes some drastic and serious doses while dismissing other, competing, cures as inadequate or lacking effectiveness. Some, indeed, will worsen the condition. What is most difficult to impart to the antigen causing the infection is the rapidity with which the terminal crisis may arise. Temperature rise may seem to be progressing at a leisurely pace. "Collapse" doesn't appear imminent today according to some forecasters. They are wrong. Past history suggests catastrophic change has occurred before and is likely to happen again. The result was the mass extinction of much life - the upcoming one will be as bad or worse. The rate discharge of our carbon by-products is increasing and the result is sure to be more severe, Lovelock says. Because the chief element in humanity's infecting their home is carbon compounds, particularly carbon dioxide, Lovelock insists on applying the therapy of nuclear energy to replace the various carbon dioxide-generating facilities now in place. Even more drastic is his suggestion that farm land be abandoned to return to its primordial state. The food human farms produce can be produced by high-tech chemical firms with minimal transition.

It's somewhat cheering that Lovelock hasn't given up on our future. He makes frequent references to his wife, Sandy, and their lifestyle. He recounts his shift from Wiltshire to Devon, dodging developers along the way. His "little patch of England" sounds idyllic. They're above the level the sea will reach when the Greenland Ice Cap dissolves into the North Atlantic. Storm waves will not lash his land, although wind and rainfall may be discomfiting. Yet, he recognises his special luck in living where he does. He wants the rest of the world to do at least as well. To that end, he endorses nuclear power vigorously, particularly since it will lead to the environmental panacea of Tokamak fusion. How the developing nations will pay for their share of this energy miracle is left unaddressed. He also embraces the idea of aerosols to be sprayed into the upper atmosphere to act as a reflective surface to sunlight. What that will do to forests and other plants is unclear. It's a paper proposal that can only be proven on a planetary scale. Finally, in the scariest of his scenarios, he admits that since most of the therapeutic methods of inhibiting the infection Gaia suffers from will come from the developed nations, there will have to be an enforcement body to make it all happen. Given the types of leaders these nations have recently elevated to "leadership" that's a daunting prospect.

Lovelock's analysis of the severity of the problem is dramatic, but hardly overblown. Our planet is under serious threat, and it's due to us. We must implement serious cures and quickly to forestall the inevitable. Once the carbon content of what we breathe reaches the critical level, there will be only some tough microbes able to sustain themselves. They will hardly be reading either this review or Lovelock's book. Nor will you or your children. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Ontario]

One might complain about the reletively small amount of supporting detail, but, for a concise, readable introduction to the key problem, this book is very, very hard to ignore. And doubly so if one is aware of Lovelock's long history of sheer brilliance.

For me the heart of the book was the set of three maps comparing the state of the world as it is now, as it was when average temperatures were five degrees Celsius colder (i.e. the last ice age), and what is likely if the world becomes five degrees warmer. These do not sound like big differences, but on a global scale such temperature changes make huge differences, and Lovelock's maps show just how massive the changes really are. Never mind a picture being worth a thousand words, these maps save a couple of million words. Looking at them will leave you wondering about real estate prices in Labrador.

Lovelock also does a good job of explaining concisely the nature of positive feedback loops that are starting to come into play in the global climate changes. I happen to be fortunate in that I am an engineer with much previous experience dealing with control systems and feedback loops, so I was in a position to follow his argument fairly comfortably in the first place. Naturally, not every reader will have such a convenient background, but I encourage everyone who does read the book not to skip over these sections, since they explain why the climate change may be both much worse and much quickeer than one might expect.

To use more ordinary terms, when Lovelock talks about "positive feedback" he is talking about a "vicious circle", in which each change for the worse makes it easier for the next change to make things even worse. Unfortunately it is not just one such circle, but half a dozen or more, all pushing the climate in the same unpleasant direction.

I must say also that some of Lovelock's ideas will seem absurd at first glance, but don't let that stop you from finishing the book or taking it seriously. For the most part he sounds strange sometimes because he is looking at things from another point of view, so naturally the scene he describes will sound unfamiliar, and especially so because he does not waste very many words. He just describes what he sees, and then leaves it largely up to his readers to draw their own conclusions. That is to say, the book is not propaganda, but rather a cold-blooded analysis of the problem. Bear in mind that Lovelock has spent most of his career writing for other scientists, who can be expected to check the facts and the conclusions independently, and he is clearly trusting all of us to be smart enough to do the same.

I ordered this book because I read a Rolling Stone article on Lovelock and I was interested to read more about this "gloomier" version of what is going to happen to the Earth.

I didn't find it that dark or gloomy--certainly there is something hopeful about his writing style. It's a bit scary if you aren't familiar with global warming and all the reactions it will cause across the globe, but ultimately what I got out of it personally, was that global warming is going to happen and as a human race we will adapt as best we can. It may wipe out a big chunk of us, but we are overpopulated as a race anyway.

More and more I see us as the cancer on the skin of Gaia. Looks like global warming and the potentially billions of deaths it may cause, will help the earth develop a culture and lifestyle that *lives in harmony* with nature instead of constantly battling against it. The crisis we will be forced into within the next 100 years will teach us a lesson that we will never learn through mass consumerism no matter how successful it has been in allowing our race to overpopulate.

This book is a must read for any human, especially if you have kids and or are planning to have kids. Even if you disagree with much of the book, it will make you stop and think and maybe help prepare you for a future you weren't expecting.