, is best remembered as the NASA scientist who came up with the Gaia hypothesis in the '60s — that Earth is like other self-regulating living systems, just bigger. But Lovelock’s new book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: The Final Warning, sounds the alarm.
Humans have kickstarted a natural process that is now irreversible, he warns: CO2 will win – seven billion people breathing put as much CO2 into the air as all the airlines do, and pets and livestock make up 23 % of that.
Lovelock, a Fellow of the Royal Society (the Academy of Sciences of the UK) points out that many climate scientists and green theorists work for universities and cannot speak freely. Same with politicians who don’t want to deliver bad news. The planet is changing, moving to the very hot period and Lovelock suggests Canada as a good real estate investment right now (that they'll somehow be spared some of this impending doom).
This article appears in Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2009.