James Lovelock on Global Warming

I have to confess that, having ready one of his early books on "Gaia Theory" about 20 years ago, I have not since returned to the writing of James Lovelock. However, I do listen to him when he pops up on the radio from time to time.

My impression is that Lovelock's pronouncements has become more inconsistant in recent years, reflecting the difficulty of applying a grand over-overarching theory to real events. In his latest "forecast", he proposes that the earth will become 5C hotter over the coming century. Apparently this in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ipcc.ch/)

According to Lovelock, such global warming will make ever larger areas of the planet uninhabitable for humans, and the population will drop to about 1 billion : around the current population of China. However, a large part of humanity will have to live in places like Britain - Canada and Siberia were also mentioned - whose climate will remain relatively stable (!?)

I'm not sure how the Chinese will take all this news. In a previous Lovelock scenario, Africa effectively becomes a new colony of China. Perhaps the Chinese will now have to start looking elsewhere, or, perhaps not....

If, in a different scenario (not Lovelock's), Gaia'a response to global warming is a new ice age (see below), sub-Saharan Africa and other currently hot/tropical climates may be a better place to be, even if the planet can still only support a much smaller population.

The fact, as Lovelock himself acknowledges, that human population is the key issue in all this speculation. Throughout history humans have, indeed, adjusted to moderate and major climate change through migration, but only when there were far fewer people around. Whether the human population needs to shrink to a fraction of it's current size is a different matter.

What we do need are sensible human population and resource consumption policies*, which reflect possible climate change scenarios at the global and nation levels. The consequences of not implementing such policies in the near future will almost certainly be catastrophic and may indeed contribute to the kind of world prophesied by Lovelock.

* For more information see www.optimumpopulationtrust.org