Crichton vs Lovelock

but Lovelock's prognosis is much more bleak. He suggests that the current population of six billion humans will be cut to a more ecologically sustainable half-to-one billion people. "How will this mass cull happen? "It'll be worse than Hitler - Gaia's going to do it," says Lovelock. He writes about this chillingly at the outset of the Revenge of Gaia, where he considers the December 2004 tsunami. "That awful event starkly revealed the power of the earth to kill. The planet we live on has merely to shrug to take some fraction of a million people to their deaths. But that is nothing compared with what may soon may happen; we are now so abusing the Earth that it may rise and move back to the hot state it was in 55 million years ago, and if it does, most of us, and our descendants, will die."

Lovelock is often regarded as the nutty old grandpa of futurists and environmental scientists. He doesn't hold back with his predictions regarding the dire state of our planet. Temperate climates to rise by 8 degrees on average over the next 50 years would see the vast majority of food-producing land become desert. The science-fiction of the gulf-stream producing a new ice-age would be tempered by global warming, instead making the arctic and northern europe the only hospitable climes for human population.

Reading Lovelock's 'Gaia' philosophies and observations are enough to give anyone the screaming heebie-jeebies, and certainly enough for this person at least to take the opportunity to ask one and all to re-think their food production and consumption impact. With the very real potential of vast amounts of our food-production acres being rendered useless in the next 50 years by global warming, perhaps it is high time that we used what land we have for efficient farming. To meet the caloric needs of our population, we must turn away from unsustainable meat farming practises and cultivate grains and vegetable crops. We simply cannot continue to reclaim wild lands for food production. The earth as a living organism needs forest, swamp and ocean to self-regulate the air we breathe.

Please do or say something about the wholesale plunder of our oceans, from which we derive 70% of our oxygen. Oppose shark-hunting from purely neanderthal fear-response and realise that when you decimate the top of the ocean food chain you seriously alter the proliferation of sub-species, many of whom feed on the micro-algae that produce our oxygen.

Remember that as stewards of this planet, we must take active steps to ensure its continuing health. Just using energy-saving lightbulbs and taking shorter showers wont cut it people. these are 'too-little-too-late' bandaid actions designed to make you feel secure that you're 'doing your bit'. I urge everyone to use whatever land is available to you to start growing as much of your own food as you are able, Soaring food-prices will soon make this a necessity. Learn the basics now. Support local produce markets and vastly reduce your consumption of highly processed goods. Learn to live with less, a lot less.

http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/