James Lovelock

Celebrities drive hybrids, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, and supermarkets carry no end of so-called "green" products. And yet the environmental crisis is only getting worse. In Surviving Gaia's Revenge, the eminent scientist James Lovelock argues that the earth is lurching ever closer to a permanent "hot state"—and much more quickly than most specialists think. There is nothing humans can do to reverse the process; the planet is simply too overpopulated to halt its own destruction by greenhouse gases. In order to survive, mankind must start preparing now for life on a radically changed planet. The meliorist approach outlined in the Kyoto Treaty must be abandoned in favor of nuclear energy and aggressive agricultural development on the small areas of earth that will remain arable. A reluctant jeremiad from one of the environmental movement's elder statesmen, Surviving Gaia's Revenge offers an essential wake-up call for the human race.

Offers a new scientific synthesis in harmony with the Greek conception of the Earth as a living whole, as Gaia.

"Lovelock, a most unusual scientist, tells us of his childhood and an apprenticeship that led him directly to a life of science. After twenty years of medical research, he chose to work independently at home. This strange way of life succeeded beyond his dreams and it was his invention of the Electron Capture Detector, the most sensitive chemical detector of its time, that told us pesticides and other harmful chemicals were everywhere and that we were polluting on a global scale. His discovery that CFCs were accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere led to the realization that the ozone layer was in danger. Most important of all was his persistent quest for Gaia, a revolutionary idea that has changed forever the way we see the Earth."--Jacket.

"Presents a radical vision of humanity's future as the thinking brain of our Earth-system, ... the author's reflections on how scientific advances are made, and on his own remarkable life as a lone scientist."--Provided by publisher.