## Metadata - Author: [[James Lovelock]] - Full Title: We Belong to Gaia - Category: #books ## Highlights - in 1969 the novelist William Golding proposed Gaia as its name. A few years later, I started collaborating with the eminent American biologist Lynn Margulis, and in our first joint paper we stated: the Gaia Hypothesis views the biosphere as an active, adaptive control system able to maintain the Earth in homeostasis. ([Location 226](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=226)) - terms. The only scientists who welcomed the idea were a few meteorologists and climatologists. Some biologists soon challenged the hypothesis, arguing that a self-regulating biosphere could never have evolved, since the organism was the unit of selection, not the biosphere. I was fortunate to have that fine and clear author Richard Dawkins as the advocate for the Darwinian opposition to Gaia; it was painful but in time I found myself agreeing with him that Darwinian evolution, as it was then understood, was incompatible with the Gaia Hypothesis. I did not then doubt Darwin, so what was wrong with the Gaia hypothesis? I knew that the constancy of climate and of the chemical composition of the air were good evidence for a self-regulating planet. Moreover, the concept of Gaia is fruitful, and it led me to discover the natural molecular carriers of the elements sulphur and iodine: dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and methyl iodide. Several years later in 1986, while collaborating with colleagues in Seattle, we made the awesome discovery that DMS from ocean algae was connected with the formation of clouds and with climate. We were moved to catch a glimpse of one of Gaia’s climate-regulation mechanisms, and we were indebted to the climate-science community who took us seriously enough to award to the four of us, Robert Charlson, M. O. Andreae, Steven Warren and me, their Norbert Gerbier Prize in 1988. ([Location 230](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=230)) - Note: Some important qualities to note about Lovelock. He appreciates well articulated opposition so he can sharpen his theory. He also uses metaphor to generate good ideas. - The persistence of the critics made me realize that Gaia would not be taken as serious science until eminent scientists approved of it in public. In 1995 I started dialogues with John Maynard Smith and William Hamilton, both of whom were prepared to discuss Gaia as a scientific topic but neither of whom could see how planetary self-regulation could evolve through natural selection. Even so, Maynard Smith gave unstinting support to my friend and colleague Tim Lenton when the latter wrote a seminal article in Nature called ‘Gaia and Natural Selection’. In it he described the several ways that the Earth keeps to its goal of sustaining habitability for whatever life forms happen to be its inhabitants. Hamilton wondered in a joint paper with Lenton, with the provocative title ‘Spora and Gaia’, if the need for organisms to disperse was the link that connected ocean algae with climate. In 1999 Hamilton said in a television programme, ‘Just as the observations of Copernicus needed a Newton to explain them, we need another Newton to explain how Darwinian evolution leads to a habitable planet.’ Then, at least in Europe, the ice began to melt, and at a meeting in Amsterdam in 2001 – at which four principal global-change organizations were represented – more than a thousand delegates signed a declaration that had as its first main statement: ‘The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components.’ ([Location 259](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=259)) - If the middle management of science had been somewhat less reactionary about Gaia, we might have had twenty more years in which to resolve the much more difficult human and political decisions about our future. ([Location 283](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=283)) - The sun is a remarkably steady and reliable source of light and heat, and the supply is 1.35 kilowatts of energy for every square metre of the Earth that is in direct unimpeded sunlight. ([Location 377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=377)) - Growing old is not as bad as is sometimes imagined. When I was in my teenage years it seemed then that by now I would be feeble, depressed and barely even half-witted. Some, but not all, of these premonitions have come true, and although I can walk and climb a modest slope, walking at that speed over mountains is no longer an option. But somehow I learnt that life begins anew at each decade; it certainly, for me, began afresh at each decade from the age of twenty onwards. As with a butterfly, the long years as a grub and then a pupa are over, and as the poet Edna St Vincent Millay said: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – It gives a lovely light. So it is with Gaia. The first aeons of her life were bacterial, and only in her equivalent of late middle age did the first meta-fauna and meta-zoa appear. Not until her eighties did the first intelligent animal appear on the planet. Whatever our faults, we surely have enlightened Gaia’s seniority by letting her see herself from space as a whole planet while she was still beautiful. Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them. ([Location 410](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=410)) - So how do we acquire, or reacquire, an instinct that recognizes not only the presence of the great Earth system but also its state of health? We do not have much to go on because the concepts of intuition and instinct tended to be ignored, or at best regarded as flaky and dubious, during the last two centuries of triumphant reductionism. In the twenty-first century we are somewhat freer to wonder about ideas like instinct and intuition, and it seems probable that long ago in our evolutionary history, when our ancestors were simple aquatic animals, we had already evolved an ability instantly to distinguish anything alive within the mainly inorganic ocean. ([Location 431](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=431)) - Note: Thinking of Weber's Biology of Wonder. An instinct for aliveness. - we could, if we chose, make Gaia an instinctive belief by exposing our children to the natural world, telling them how and why it is Gaia in action, and showing that they belong to it. ([Location 451](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=451)) - Our religions have not yet given us the rules and guidance for our relationship with Gaia. The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners. ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=459)) - Important concepts like God or Gaia are not comprehensible in the limited space of our conscious minds, but they do have meaning in that inner part of our minds that is the seat of intuition. Our deep unconscious thoughts are not rationally constructed; they emerge fully formed as our conscience and an instinctive ability to distinguish good from evil. Perhaps this is why the early Quakers knew that the still, small voice within does not come from conscious reckoning. Our conscious rational minds are no more capable of deep thought than is the tiny screen of a contemporary mobile telephone able to present in its full glory a Vermeer painting. ([Location 465](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=465)) - Darwin’s great vision of evolution has raised biology from a cataloguing activity into a science, but now we are beginning to see Darwinism is incomplete. Evolution is not just a property of organisms – what evolves is the whole Earth system with its living and non-living parts existing as a tight coupled entity. ([Location 476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=476)) - It is foolish to think that we can explain science as it evolves, rationally and consciously. We have to use the crude tool of metaphor to translate conscious ideas into unconscious understanding. Just as the metaphor, a living Earth, used to explain Gaia, was wrongly rejected by reductionist scientists, so it may be wrong of them also to reject the metaphors and fables of the sacred texts. Crude they may be, but they serve to ignite an intuitive understanding of God and creation that cannot be falsified by rational argument. ([Location 479](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=479)) - As a scientist I know that Gaia Theory is provisional and likely to be displaced by a larger and more complete view of the Earth. But for now I see it as the seed from which an instinctive environmentalism can grow; one that would instantly reveal planetary health or disease and help sustain a healthy world. ([Location 482](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=482)) - a seed of optimism from which other voluntary controls could grow ([Location 505](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=505)) - Now that the Earth is in imminent danger of a transition to a hot and inhospitable state, it seems amoral to strive ostentatiously to extend our personal lifespan beyond its normal biological limit of about one hundred years. When I was a young post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston an eminent paediatrician complained of the huge, more than tenfold, disparity between funds given for cancer research and those given for childhood disease; I suspect that it still exists. ([Location 512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=512)) - If we are to continue as a civilization that successfully avoids natural catastrophes, we have to make our own constraints on growth and make them strong and make them now. ([Location 517](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=517)) - Over half the Earth’s people live in cities, and they hardly ever see, feel or hear the natural world. Therefore our first duty should be to convince them that the real world is the living Earth and that they and their city lives are a part of it and wholly dependent on it for their existence. Our role is to teach and to set an example by our lives. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=519)) - Our task as individuals is to think of Gaia first. In no way does this make us inhuman or uncaring; our survival as a species is wholly dependent on Gaia and on our acceptance of her discipline. ([Location 526](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=526)) - We think that we are more intelligent than stone-agers, yet how many modern humans could live successfully in caves, or would know how to light wood fires for cooking, or make clothes and shoes from animal skins or bows and arrows good enough to keep their families fed? I am indebted to Jerry Glynn and Theodore Gray for making this point in their guidebook for users of the computer program Mathematica, a mathematics processor. Using as an example the fact that modern children can hardly add a column of numbers without a calculator, they observe that this is no bad thing, since each stage of human development brings with it a full measure of skills exchanged for others no longer needed; stone-agers were probably as fully occupied with living as we are. ([Location 545](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=545)) - Peace on you Aboriginals; you individually are no worse and no better than we are, it is just that we are power-assisted and more numerous. ([Location 554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=554)) - Through Gaia I see science and technology as traits possessed by humans that have the potential for great good and great harm. Because we are part of, and not separate from Gaia, our intelligence is a new capacity and strength for her as well as a new danger. Evolution is iterative, mistakes are made, blunders committed; but in time that great eraser and corrector, natural selection, usually keeps a neat and tidy world. Perhaps our and Gaia’s greatest error was the conscious abuse of fire. Cooking meat over a wood fire may have been acceptable, but the deliberate destruction of whole ecosystems by fire merely to drive out the animals within was surely our first great sin against the living Earth. It has haunted us ever since and combustion could now be our auto da fé, and the cause of our extinction. ([Location 555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=555)) - the evidence coming in from the watchers around the world brings news of an imminent shift in our climate towards one that could easily be described as Hell: so hot, so deadly that only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive. We have made this appalling mess of the planet and mostly with rampant liberal good intentions. Even now, when the bell has started tolling to mark our ending, we still talk of sustainable development and renewable energy as if these feeble offerings would be accepted by Gaia as an appropriate and affordable sacrifice. We are like a careless and thoughtless family member whose presence is destructive and who seems to think that an apology is enough. ([Location 588](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=588)) - The British remember with pride the successful withdrawal of their army from Dunkirk in 1940, and do not see it as an ignominious defeat. It was certainly not a victory, but it was a successful and sustainable retreat. The time has come when all of us must plan a retreat from the unsustainable place that we have now reached through the inappropriate use of technology; far better to withdraw now while we still have the energy and the time. Like Napoleon in Moscow we have too many mouths to feed and resources that diminish daily while we make up our minds. The retreat from Dunkirk was not just good generalship: it was aided by an amazing expression of spontaneous unselfish good will from those numerous civilians who willingly risked their lives and their small boats to cross the Channel to rescue their army. We need the people of the world to sense the real and present danger so that they will spontaneously mobilize and unstintingly bring about an orderly and sustainable withdrawal to a world where we try to live in harmony with Gaia. ([Location 609](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=609)) - Few of us now can change our lives sufficiently to express our allegiance to Gaia, but I suspect the changes soon to come will force the pace, and just as civilization ultimately benefited in the earlier dark ages from the example of those with faith in God, so we might benefit from those brave ecologists with trust in Gaia. The monasteries carried through that earlier dark age the hard-won knowledge of the Greek and Roman civilizations, and perhaps these present-day guardians could do the same for us. Despite all our efforts to retreat sustainably, we may be unable to prevent a global decline into a chaotic world ruled by brutal warlords on a devastated Earth. If this happens, we should think of those small groups of monks in mountain fastnesses like Montserrat or on islands like Iona and Lindisfarne who served this vital purpose. ([Location 688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=688)) - We suspect that we should not wait to act until there is visible evidence of malign climate change – for by then it might be too late to reverse the changes we have set in motion. We are like the smoker who enjoys a cigarette and imagines giving up smoking when the harm becomes tangible. Most of all we hope for a good life in the immediate future and would rather put aside unpleasant thoughts of doom to come. ([Location 714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=714)) - One thing we can do to lessen the consequences of catastrophe is to write a guidebook for our survivors to help them rebuild civilization without repeating too many of our mistakes. I have long thought that a proper gift for our children and grandchildren is an accurate record of all we know about the present and past environment. ([Location 719](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=719)) - For most of us, what we know of the Earth comes from books and television programmes that present either the single-minded view of a specialist or persuasion from a talented lobbyist. We live in adversarial, not thoughtful, times and tend to hear only the arguments of each of the special-interest groups. Even when they know that they are wrong they never admit it. They all fight for the interests of their group while claiming to speak for humankind. This is fine entertainment, but what use would their words be to the survivors of a future flood or famine? When they read them in a book drawn from the debris would they learn what went wrong and why? What help would they gain from the tract of a green lobbyist, the press release of a multinational power company, or the report of a governmental committee? ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B08Z6ZNRT7&location=725))