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The Vanishing Face of Gaia 
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One of the world’s greatest scientists James Lovelock is best known for Gaia theory, the most useful way of understanding the dramatic changes happening to the earth. The Vanishing Face of Gaia is Lovelock’s warning about the terrifying environmental problems we will confront in the 21st century. The earth as we know it is vanishing, moving inexorably to a new, hot state. That we can ’save the planet’ by reducing carbon emissions is, Lovelock says, nothing but a sales pitch: the earth, as it always has done, will save itself. It is up to us to survive. Nearly 90, James Lovelock is about to head into space with Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic, so he can, for the first time, see the face of Gaia. James will be interviewed by political philosopher John Gray.
James Lovelock is the author of more than 200 scientific papers and the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory). He has written three books on the subject: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, The Ages of Gaia and Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, as well as an autobiography, Homage to Gaia. In 2003 he was made a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen and, in September 2005, Prospect magazine named him as one of the world’s top 100 global public intellectuals. In April 2006 he was awarded the Edinburgh Medal at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.
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February 24th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[...] here to find out more about the event with James [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I enjoyed reading what James Lovelock had to say but feel uncomfortable on how lightly he shrugs off the possible catastrophic results playing with so powerful an energy as nuclear energy. It seems to me Man with his nuclear reactors persists in playing God. The way in which he just drifts over the problem of nuclear waste baffles me. I most certainly do not know what the answer is, but it seems that the human species in all it,s arrogance are reaping what we have sown. It was clear years ago what was coming. Yet have the audacity to think we are an intelligent species, “Well” maybe we are, but the way in which we use it is most surely in question.
October 13th, 2009 at 4:49 am
We know about nuclear energy now, and wishful thinking isn’t going to put the genie back in the bottle.
Which problem do you think is the lesser to leave our descendants with; 1 football stadium of nuclear waste which they would have to keep re-sealing every 200 years or so; or no oil left at all for feedstock into plastics, pharmaceuticals and fertilisers.
There is an element of risk, as you say, but the world did not exactly come to an end with Chernobyl - no, the lives lost were the equivalent of around a year in coalmining or 5 years of oil extraction.
The dirty bomb risk is unfortunately ineradicable, as I said - that genie is out.
Having said all that, I am not so much an advocate of nuclear as I once was, we need a good mix of solutions.
Although it is very clean during productive life, it still has high carbon output for construction and de-commission.
Economy of scale is now appearing to show wind power to be a good solution IF we could get over the problem of nimbyism - building them out to sea adds massively to ongoing infrastructure costs and negates any advantage gained though.