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Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth

November 9, 2021

Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth

Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier

Viewpoint Ponta do Sossego
‘I am not hopeful of a positive outcome at Cop26, knowing who is participating. I was not invited to Glasgow, though that is hardly a surprise.’ Photograph: Magdalena Bujak/Alamy

I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, speaking in Brussels this Thursday

That is the wrongheaded approach of the United Nations, which is about to stage one big global conference for the climate in Glasgow, having just finished a different big global conference for biodiversity in Kunming.

This division is as much of a mistake as the error made by universities when they teach chemistry in a different class from biology and physics. It is impossible to understand these subjects in isolation because they are interconnected. The same is true of living organisms that greatly influence the global environment. The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and the temperature of the surface is actively maintained and regulated by the biosphere, by life, by what the ancient Greeks used to call Gaia.

Almost 60 years ago, I suggested our planet self-regulated like a living organism. I called this the Gaia theory, and was later joined by biologist Lynn Margulis, who also espoused this idea. Both of us were roundly criticised by scientists in academia. I was an outsider, an independent scientist, and the mainstream view then was the neo-Darwinist one that life adapts to the environment, not that the relationship also works in the other direction, as we argued…

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Gaia Exists! Here is the Proof

August 4, 2019

Gaia Exists! Here is the Proof

Gaia is neither benevolent nor merciful. She is harsh and ruthless. 

Environmentalists are sometimes defined as “Gaia worshippers,” a term supposed to be an insult. That’s a little strange because most people on this planet openly worship non-existing entities and that doesn’t normally make them targets for insults. Maybe it is because there is an important difference, here: Gaia exists. Oh yes, she does exist!

Who or what is Gaia, exactly? The name belongs to an ancient Goddess but the modern version is something completely different. As you probably know, the term was proposed for the first time by James Lovelock in 1972 and co-developed with Lynn Margulis. As it happens for many innovative ideas, it was the result of a simple observation: if the Sun radiative intensity increases gradually over the eons, how come that the Earth’s surface temperature has remained within the boundaries necessary to keep the biosphere alive? There has to be something that keeps it like that and Lovelock proposed that the mechanism was based on regulating the concentration of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2.

So, Gaia is not supposed to be benevolent nor merciful, and not even a Goddess: we could say that She is what She is. But does She really really exist? Not everyone agrees on this point, the concept is often referred as the “Gaia hypothesis” and entire books have been written to demonstrate that there is no such a thing. Indeed, in the beginning, the idea was mostly qualitative and not proven. Lovelock proposed a clever model called “Daisyworld” that showed how a simple biosphere could control the temperature of a planet. But the Earth’s biosphere is not just made out of daisies and something more than that was needed. And, yes, over time proofs have accumulated to show that Gaia is much more than a qualitative hypothesis (or an object of worship by people believing in non-existing beings).

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Excerpt From “De-Growth in the Suburbs, A Radical Urban Imaginary.” Part 3

November 10, 2018

EXCERPT FROM “DE-GROWTH IN THE SUBURBS, A RADICAL URBAN IMAGINARY. “ PART 3

The Limits to Capital

Are we at the threshold of the apocalyptic ‘next world’ that scientist James Lovelock (2009) speaks of? Put differently, is the human species now at the precipice of natural default and the massive societal change it must surely trigger? These are not new questions. The end of carbon-intensive capitalism has been long predicted: As Beck (2012: 90) reminded us, already, more than a century ago, Max Weber anticipated the end of oil-based capitalism when he spoke of a time when ‘the last hundredweight of fossil fuel is built up’.

The contemporary problem of overshoot has two faces: one of over accumulation and thus depletion of natural capital; the other a simul- taneous overabundance of financial capital and critical deprivation of social capital (‘planet of slums’ etc.). The built environment is now central to these twin crises of the age. Urbanisation is at the heart of overproduction and ecological default, but also central to the absorption of excess capital. The real estate sector has its own dynamics, and investment in housing is vital for capital accumulation, as Harvey has explained, yet all this takes place within a paradigm of growth capitalism that shapes and seems to impel these destructive and often exclusive modes of development. The massive contemporary infrastructure development push in world cities reflects both realities—absorption and depletion. The ricocheting spiral of these modalities defines the urban age. This indicates a convulsive instability at the heart of human prospect that contradicts the predictive confidence of popular urban commentary. As debt fuels what seem to be property bubbles in various urban centres—with the Australian capital cities of Sydney and Melbourne being particularly worrying examples—renegade economist Steve Keen (2017) warns that it would be prudent to prepare for the closing of the casino before these bubbles burst. The convulsion suggests a bad ending.

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We are Gaians! — United with a living planet in crisis

February 18, 2018

We are Gaians! — United with a living planet in crisis

Versión original en Castellano: ¡Somos de Gaia!, D.C. Wahl, 2005

Many of us are familiar with the name Gaia. But how well do most people understand the concept this word tries to express? Mythologically Gaia refers to the ancient Greek goddess. More than a simple member of the Greek pantheon Gaia was revered as the all containing and all embracing mother. [This article was first published in 2005, in Spanish, by EcoHabitar, Nr.4, pp.40–41. see original copy here.]

According to Greek mythology, the universe began in chaos. From this chaos emerged Gaia to give birth to the world. The poet Hesiod (7th Century B.C.) called Gaia “the mother of all”. She represents the feminine archetype that gives birth to life — a concept as old as human consciousness. Among the ancient American civilizations the equivalent of Gaia was called ‘Pachamama’, referring to the all embracing goddess of Nature.

The Sadness of Gaia — by Natalie Glasson

The resurgence of Gaia in our time owes a lot to the work of the British scientist James Lovelock. In the 1970’s, Lovelock followed the advice of his friend, the writer William Golding, and used the name of the ancient goddess to refer to a revolutionary new hypothesis he wanted to propose.

James Lovelock

At the time Lovelock was working for N.A.S.A. on the first project that was investigating the possibility of life on Mars. His job was to design experiments and equipment that could be used to establish whether there was life on the Red Planet.

While analysing new data about the atmospheric composition of various planets, Lovelock realized that Earth was unique in showing a pronounced chemical disequilibrium in the relative composition of gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen in its atmosphere. In comparison, the atmospheres of the other planets in our solar system all had atmospheric compositions in equilibrium, with little potential for further reactions or change.

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Climate Armageddon Revisited

September 25, 2017

Climate Armageddon Revisited

It was only five years ago that Scientific American published this article: Climate Armageddon: How the World’s Weather Could Quickly Run Amok, d/d May 25, 2012. The subheading to that article read: “Climate scientists think a perfect storm of climate ‘flip’ could cause massive upheavals in a matter of years.” Well now….

That 2012 article also explained how the eminent British scientist James Lovelock (98) switched allegiance from his original theory of Gaia, which states that Gaia (Earth) will always compensate for changes in climate by natural occurrence, a self-correcting mechanism, not too hot, not too cold, not to worry. That was back in the 1970s.

Contrariwise, thirty-plus years later in 2006 Lovelock rejected his own theory, ominously stating: “I have to tell you, as members of the Earth’s family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilization, are in grave danger.” (Published in The Independent in 2006), Ibid.

Thus, Lovelock rejected his own Gaia hypothesis of a self-regulating planet and embraced the “flip” school of thought, which refers to dynamic systems or mathematics that describe things that tend to change suddenly, difficult to predict as to timing. Ergo, this refers to the fearsome tipping point, when the climate system suddenly turns wacky like a wild beast poked with a stick (Broecker), self-reinforcing its destructive path, hands-free, no stopping its ruinous behavior! This may already be happening on a scale that is downright scary in fact singularly scary because it’s so soon. This is not normal. The planet is on Speed!

Massive hurricanes (Harvey, Irma, Maria) and torrential flooding (Houston, Sierra Leone, Bihar-India, Assam-India, Nepal, Mumbai, Southern Asian Noah’s Ark territory) are only telltale signs, minor events in a bigger picture, like canaries in the proverbial mineshaft, warning of a much larger canvas painted with darkened hues, threatening like the distant rumbling of an upcoming mega storm.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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