By Staff
James Lovelock, 88, ranks as one of the 20th century's influential scientists. He invented the device that helped detect the growing hole in our ozone layer. And he introduced the theory of Gaia – the notion that our planet is a kind of superorganism that is, in a sense, "alive."
Life is not just a passenger on Earth, but an active participant, helping to create the very conditions that sustain it.
While others still debate global warming or climate change, he is much farther down the road to a vantage point from where he can see "a dark time" where irreversible global warming will claim more than 6 billion people by the end of the century.
While many people are still content to think of balmy 80-degree temperatures at Halloween as an excuse to extend the golf season, even with widespread drought and California burning, Lovelock says in the Nov. 1 Rolling Stone that droughts and other extreme weather will be commonplace by 2020.
At first, Lovelock didn't regard global warming as an urgent threat to our planet, either, but has come to believe that climate balance is out of kilter due to pollution and deforestation.
"You could look at climate change as a response of the system to get rid of an irritating species – us humans," he says.
Lovelock sees the Sahara Desert arriving in Europe and a Berlin as hot as Baghdad by 2040. Atlanta could be a kudzu jungle, with Phoenix, Las Vegas, Beijing, Miami (under the sea) and London (likewise flooded) uninhabitable.
In his doomsday scenario, food shortages drive millions north.
"The Chinese have nowhere to go but up into Siberia. How will the Russians feel about that? I fear that war between Russia and China is probably inevitable."
Lovelock further envisions Earth's population of 6.6 billion reduced to as few as 500 million survivors inhabiting Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia and the Arctic Basin.
By the end of the century, temperate zones such as North America and Europe could heat up by 14 degrees Fahrenheit.
Since that's double the likeliest predictions of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sanctioned body of the globe's top scientists, are these the ravings of an old man?
"I could be wrong about all this," the resident of Devon in southwestern England, tells the magazine. "The trouble is, all those well-intentioned scientists who are arguing that we're not in any imminent danger are basing their arguments on computer models. I'm basing mine on what's actually happening."
Recent satellite measurements indicate that Arctic ice is melting so rapidly that the region could be ice-free by 2030.
"Jim is a brilliant scientist who has been right about many things in the past," British entrepreneur Richard Branson said. "If he's feeling gloomy about the future, it's important for mankind to pay attention."
Lovelock himself likens today to "1939 all over again. The threat is obvious, but we've failed to grasp what's at stake. We're still talking about appeasement."
Lack of political leadership is striking, but people "understand what's happening far better than most politicians."