Rediscovering The Vanishing Face of Gaia

Review of James Lovelock’s most recent book The Vanishing Face of Gaia

Excerpt from Worldwatch Transforming Cultures blog, 23 December 2009

'Ultimately, one of the most important cultural changes needed is an understanding that we are part of and completely dependent on a living planetary system...

As Lovelock notes, our current understanding of climate regulation is shaped by our view that Earth is but a ball of rock rather than “a live planet that regulates itself.” Once we understand Earth in systems terms, we see just how dire the climate situation really is.

The idea that temperature will slowly and uniformly inch up - as is described in IPCC consensus models - is inaccurate according to Lovelock. Rather, we’ll hit a discontinuity where the system shifts rapidly from its current state to a “hot state.”...

Lovelock’s ideas - perhaps because they’re complex and not reductionist like today’s science and because they’re outside the dominant cultural mythos (e.g. that man is separate from and above nature and not a mere organ of a larger entity)—barely penetrate the discussions even within the environmental community and have not been pulled into climate modeling on which IPCC projections are made...

Vanishing Face also reminds us that embedded in a culture of sustainability will necessarily be an understanding of our utter dependence on Earth and an understanding of it as a living complex system. What this specifically looks like will certainly vary across cultures - some may deify Earth as in millennia past, others may revere but not worship the planet, and others still may describe this dependence in purely intellectual and scientific terms - in “geophysiological terms” as Lovelock is fond of saying. But this is one cultural evolution that will surely be central to our survival as a flourishing part of Earth - whether in its current state or in a hotter one.'