Lovelock's 'Rough Ride' was initially unsettling

James Lovelock.

Reading James Lovelock’s “A Rough Ride to The Future” was initially unsettling.

In the first line of the introduction he wrote: “This is not a book about climate change and what we should be doing to improve our carbon footprint –climate change comes into it, and the recent storms and inundations here in the United Kingdom and the cold breath of the polar vortex in North America remind us of that.”

The 95-year-old scientist/inventor/author is obviously concerned about the disruption humans have caused to the earth’s climate systems, but in explaining that through his Gaia hypothesis linked it to an accelerated evolution driven by human invention.

My wonderment about Lovelock’s true position was put to rest in chapter six, headed: “Can We Stop Climate Change?”

Opening the chapter, he wrote:

“Recently and interviewer told me. ‘Your book The Revenge of Gaia’ was the scariest book I have read”. I was surprised; I had not meant to write a doom story, but intended a wake-up call, a warning that climate change was real and deadly and could be a threat to all humanity in only a few decades. I based my warning, as did many scientists, on the reports of the IPCC. The questioner then asked, ‘Was you book over-the-top, and have you changed your mind? Do you know think that we can relax and continue business as usual?’

‘No, I do not,’ I replied. ‘I see the threat just as real; all that has changed for me is that I have less confidence in the present model-based predictions of the future climate. We are now less sure about when and where it will happen, but there is little doubt that there could be dire consequences for humanity’s current way of life if carbon dioxide and population continue to increase.

“What has changed my attitude since the end of the twentieth century is the loss of innocence. Twenty years ago I thought that we had understood the disease of global warming, and I was confident that we could cure it. Now I see global warming as one consequence of the evolution of the Anthropocene – as inevitable as population growth, economic instability and the emergence of artefacts beyond our capacity to control or understand.”