James+Lovelock2112

James Lovelock

Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis states that the Earth is like a complex organism with self regulating structures, and that global-warming, anthropogenic or not, will not harm Gaia overall. In Lovelock’s Gaia the plants and animals work together (although with no conscious aim or goal) to provide the best conditions for life. Also, it should be made clear that Lovelock does not extend the idea of Gaia to being a conscious organism or life form, but rather a system that regulates itself, but has no conscious goals or ends. What Lovelock suggests might happen with anthropogenic causes of global warming (ie increased levels of atmospheric CO2 caused by cars, or factories etc.) is that the homeostasis of Gaia might be thrown off, and that people’s place on planet Earth, but not life itself, might be at stake.

Lovelock thinks that Gaia has certain “vital organs” as Palmer (25) phrases it. These vital organs could be tropical rainforests, prokaryotic bacteria, deep-sea algae etc. He also says that if we destroy or interfere with these vital organs that Gaia might be thrown off and that our ecosystem could be more or less doomed. Therefore, people should not interfere with Gaia, because if they do, their ecosystem could be destroyed. Lovelock’s moralities are there fore anthropocentric, in that he wants people to change their actions toward nature, in order to save themselves.

Where holism comes in, and what the Gaia hypothesis means overall, is that the Earth is a living entity, that has moral consideration. Gaia has consideration here, although for apparently anthropocentric reasons. Lovelock says, “Philosophy suggests one reason why we can not destroy the earth with moral impunity; namely, that the ‘dead’ earth is an organism possessing a certain kind and degree of life, which we intuitively respect as such.” We respect the “life” of the Earth intuitively, because it has a kind and degree of life, and because it has humans, and it would be wrong to destroy the place where humans live, and therefore human life. (Thompson)