In the late 1960s, he was the first to discover ozone layer-damaging CFCs in the atmosphere. But famed British climatologist and futurist James Lovelock is probably best known for his Gaia hypothesis, a concept he formulated in the early 1970s in which he proposed that the planet Earth was a single "superorganism."
A consequence of his work with NASA in the 1960s researching the possibility of life on Mars, the hypothesis (named after the Greek goddess of the Earth) was popularized in his 1979 book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth.
Though some respected scientists disagreed with Lovelock's idea of Gaia -- Richard Dawkins, Ford Doolittle and Stephen Jay Gould among them -- many others were supportive and intrigued.
In 1989, Stephen Schneider, a professor of Environmental Biology at Stanford University, organized the American Geophysical Union's first Chapman Conference around the hypothesis. The debate still exists, and since Lovelock first proposed Gaia, he has been one of the first to warn people about the dangers of climate change.
In 2006, the same year as the third international Gaia conference, Lovelock published The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back -- and How We Can Still Save Humanity, in which he postulates that it's too late to stave off most of the effects of global warming, and there will definitely come a time when major portions of the planet become inhospitable for human existence.
Since global warming is inevitable, he argues, the world should turn its attention to finding ways to cope with its effects. According to Lovelock, people will have to move.
In a recent interview with Radio New Zealand, the decorated 89 year-old scientist (he's a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Commander of the British Empire) says that New Zealand's efforts towards passing an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) -- legislation that is widely expected to become law next week -- is a waste of time.
Instead of devising carbon trading schemes, Lovelock argues that resources should be used to build "proper cities" and prepare the infrastructure and agriculture of island nations to take on what he believes will be a population influx -- once other parts of the world succumb to higher temperatures.
"I think the role of New Zealand, similar to that of the UK and other island nations, is to be a lifeboat because the world may get almost intolerable during the coming century," says Lovelock. "You've seen it happening in Australia already: Desert is spreading and things just won't grow. The island nations like New Zealand will be spared that kind of damage."
"Trying to stop global warming," Lovelock says matter-of-factly, "is almost a certain waste of time."
GET INFORMED
- Listen to the interview (Radio New Zealand, September 1, 2008)
- Read "Top British scientist says New Zealand should become 'Lifeboat' for global warming survivors" (RushPRnews, October 25, 2008)
- Visit James Lovelock's Web site
- Read "James Lovelock, Gaia's grand old man" (Salon.com, August 17, 2000)
- Check airfares to New Zealand on TripAdvisor.com
- Sign the "We Can Solve It" petition for a global treaty on climate change
- Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe
