By Susan Kraemer •
July 27, 2009
In desperate times, people look at desperate measures.
James Lovelock - - who is one of the leading environmentalists on the planet has made a startling proposal: that the best way to save the Amazon from being destroyed is to turn it into a repository for nuclear waste.
He argues in “The Revenge of Gaia” that animals and plants don’t perceive radioactivity as a danger. What is far more threatening to ecosystems are people — who create extensive farming or mining and construction sites. So to keep humans out of valuable ecosystems, we could dump our nuclear waste there.
That will keep people out.
Oddly, both plants and animals have increased around the areas of Belarus that were heavily radiated after the accident at Chernobyl, although radiation reduces their lifespan.
The lack of human intervention may make nuclear wildlife refuges more beneficial overall:
By Richard Elen •
January 29, 2009
In a recent interview in Britain’s New Scientist magazine, scientist James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia Hypothesis and the man whose work on CFCs led to their being banned, says that he believes that at least 90% of the human population will be wiped out by the end of the century as a direct result of climate change.
By Justin Van Kleeck •
September 24, 2008
James Lovelock’s Gaia theory, that the Earth is a single living organism, has been invoked countless times by environmentalists. In their uses (and abuses) of it, the theory becomes evidence for humanity’s connection with nature and so our responsibility to treat nature with care.
In fact, Lovelock is anything but an “environmentalist” in the traditional sense. Nor is he a staunch advocate for rigorous conservation and “dehumanization” of the planet, at least in his first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979). He quite often criticizes as fatuous and downright silly many environmentalists’ claims, using evidence gathered from his work in the sciences.
One passage in Gaia struck me as extremely provocative despite being written nearly thirty years ago. Discussing the atmospheric gases, specifically those produced by human industry, Lovelock writes,
In our persistent self-imposed alienation from nature, we tend to think that our industrial products are not ‘natural’. In fact, they are just as natural as all the other chemicals of the Earth, for they have been made by us, who surely are living creatures. They may of course be aggressive and dangerous, like nerve gases, but no more so than the toxin manufactured by the botulinus bacillus.1
Renowned climate scientist James Lovelock says humanity has now passed the point of no return when it comes to climate change. There’s nothing we can do to stop the climate train, he believes, so we should start getting ready to adapt to life on a hotter, more forbidding planet.
