WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: We Must Mega-Engineer

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We Must Mega-Engineer

James Lovelock's doomsday message (" The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years, The Independent, 16 February 2006, page 1) is, one fervently hopes, a prediction whose purpose is not to dispel hope, but to act as a last desperate plea for action, at the scale that is required to save the balance of natural systems on Earth. His book, The Revenge of Gaia , has yet to come out; but from the newspaper articles summarizing his argument, one notes that his prediction is based on assumptions that include (1) that the US and China will not control their carbon emissions in time, and (2) that we will not take otherwise sufficient action, globally, to avert the worst-case scenario of 5-to-8 degree Celsius global warming. If Lovelock can be proven wrong on both counts, one would conclude, then nature and civilization are both saved.

The only way to prove Lovelock wrong is to take him seriously, and prove him wrong -- by acting to change the world, so that these assumptions and conclusions no longer hold.

About the urgency and credibility of Lovelock's alarming pronouncement, I personally have no doubt. A year ago, when the news about global dimming -- which has been dampening the effect of global warming, by shading out 10-30% of the suns rays with our industrial smoke -- was reported in the scientific press, I was in Australia on a speaking tour. This news, I remember saying to government officials and others there, makes the situation far graver than we previously understood it to be. If the smoke disappears, as it mostly did over the skies of the United States after 9/11, the earth immediately heats up even more (as data collected during those ...

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