And, speaking of the hole in the ozone, this article, which, inexplicably shows up in the Style section, rather than above-the-fold on Page One, is definitely worth reading all the way through. It discusses James Lovelock, who was one of the first to note the thinning of the ozone and to propose a solution for it. Lovelock, however, is more famous for his Gaia Theory, which he developed as a result of studying the Martian atmosphere.
In 1961 Lovelock worked with NASA. The space agency wanted to design a lander to search for life on Mars. That, Lovelock thought, was silly. What if a lander set down in the wrong spot? What if Martian life wasn't bacterial?
Lovelock took a conceptual leap. If Mars bore life, bacteria would be obliged to use oxygen to breathe and to deposit their wastes as methane. Lovelock found that Earth's atmosphere contained massive quantities of oxygen and methane, gases that are the very signature of life. Mars's atmosphere was thick with carbon dioxide, the calling card of a dead planet.
That discovery changed his life. He came to see Earth as a self-regulating biosphere. The sun has warmed by 25 percent since life appeared, so Earth produced more algae and forests to absorb carbon dioxide, ensuring roughly constant temperatures.
Focusing on Lovelock's newest book, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity, released last month in the U.S., the article paints a grim picture of the next two to six decades.
"It's going too fast," he says softly. "We will burn."
Why is that?
"Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."
"Maybe 200 million people will migrate close to the Arctic and survive this. Even if we took extraordinary steps, it would take the world 1,000 years to recover." . . . It begins with the melting of ice and snow. As the Arctic grows bare -- the Greenland ice cap is shrinking far faster than had been expected -- dark ground emerges and absorbs heat. That melts more snow and softens peat bogs, which release methane. As oceans warm, algae are dying and so absorbing less heat-causing carbon dioxide.
To the south, drought already is drying out the great tropical forests of the Amazon. "The forests will melt away just like the snow," Lovelock says.
Even the northern forests, those dark cool beauties of pines and firs, suffer. They absorb heat and shelter bears, lynxes and wolves through harsh winters. But recent studies show the boreal forests are drying and dying and inducing more warming.
Casting 30, 40 years into the future, Lovelock sees sub-Saharan lands becoming uninhabitable. India runs out of water, Bangladesh drowns, China eyes a Siberian land grab, and local warlords fight bloody wars over water and energy.
In the end, though, Lovelock remains optimistic. "People say, 'Well, you're 87, you won't live to see this,' " he says. "I have children, I have grandchildren, I wish none of this. But it's our fate; we need to recognize it's another wartime. We desperately need a Moses to take us to the Arctic and preserve civilization.
"It's too late to turn back."
Myself, I can do without another Moses. But the chaos that global climate change will produce often leads to wars and an increase in patriarchal thought and authority. That's only one of the reasons why it concerns me so much. Of course we'll see the breakdown of societies, warlords feuding, as Lovelock predicts, over water, arable land, and declining sources of energy. Of course we'll hear that the increasingly hostile climate and the increasingly frequent storms, wildfires, and oceanic deadspots are due to our failure to propitiate the angry/sky/father/mountain/thunder god du jour by failing to hate sex/ control women's sexuality/abstain from alcohol, etc. It won't be pretty. But I'll keep working for as soft a landing as is possible.
What else can anyone do?
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