James Lovelock is too stupid to prevent climate change

Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead.

James Lovelock is a notable scientist and inventor. He’s most famous for developing the Gaia theory, which argues that living organisms and the physical processes of the Earth are part of a huge system that regulates conditions on this planet to keep it comfortable for life.

He’s also a total knobhead.

Lovelock has been prominent in recent years in the debates about climate change and ecological destruction. What he says shows that he’s good at understanding the global climate, and absolutely useless at understanding human beings, politics and social change. His rantings are seriously damaging to those of us who actually want to change the world and make society fairer and more ecologically sustainable.

He recently gave his first interview in months to the Guardian. In the intervening period the world has seen the hacking of emails from climate scientists that was blown into a huge controversy by the media, the total failure of the global elite to tackle climate change at Copenhagen, and the really cold winter.

In the face of declining public trust in climate science, Lovelock says he hasn’t read the hacked emails, just the media coverage, but that he was “absolutely disgusted.” Thanks for taking a balanced view and making up your own mind there James!

But more importantly, the headline given by the paper was his claim that “Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change.”

James Lovelock is a serious misanthrope. He ultimately believes that humans are doomed to face the collapse of civilisation through runaway climate change, and we’ll never do anything about it. In his book ‘The Revenge of Gaia,’ he argues for an effort to preserve as much of human science and knowledge for survival in a mass produced book in preparation for the coming apocalypse.

Not if we have anthing to do with it

The risk of runaway climate change is all too real, and could indeed lead to a situation that undermines the basis of human civilisation. But there is another way we could go. What James Lovelock fails to understand is that it isn’t humans that are stupid. There are millions of humans all over the world that understand that it’s our social and economic system, based on inequality and constant growth at the expense of the environment, that’s responsible for taking us to the brink. What we urgently must start doing is changing our society and economy, allowing us to meet everyone’s needs without further destroying the planet.

In the face of apocalypse, people feel powerless. But as long as there is the chance of survival, humans must try to survive. Accepting it as inevitable would be the most spectacular example of us ignoring our duty from the whole of history. But that’s what Lovelock advocates, saying he favours “adaption” to climate change. It also leads people to going “Fuck it, what’s the point?”, something that he’s encouraged when he says “Enjoy life now, because, if we’re lucky, it’ll be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

It’s understandable that Lovelock is unable to see the eco-socialist alternative to catastrophe when you take a look at his political views. He blames a lack of “elitism” for the email scandal. He talks of “dumbo” scientists “churned out” by “mass produced universities.” “Elitism is important in science. It is vital,” he argues.

What this sounds like to me is a belief that science has been corrupted by the break down of traditional privileges that meant it was hard for working class kids to get a job in science. (It’s still pretty hard tbh.) It completely ignores the fact that the scientists who wrote the controversial emails are under siege from an organised, right wing climate change denial movement, which aims at protecting the profits of energy corporations at the expense of long term human survival.

His love for elitism shines through as well when he talks about what needs to be done:

We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can’t happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What’s the alternative to democracy? There isn’t one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

At this point he really is skirting the territory of eco-fascism. The desire to see a strong state, or some kind of virtual dictatorship impose ecological limits will not work, and turns people off environmentalism. What we need is real democracy, equality that’s social and economic as well as political.

Quite right old chap, these plebs have got no place in a lab!

I’m not going to go into here some of the more mad things he’s said, such as that most people should have to eat food that’s been chemically synthesised, leaving real food a luxury for those that can afford it. Or that this science fiction process should be fuelled by a massive programme of building nuclear power stations, and that we should dump the nuclear waste in the Amazon jungle.

The point of all this is that Lovelock is a respected voice of the environmental movement. Much as he is a great scientist, Lovelock has absolutely no solution to the problems facing human society. Far too much of the coverage that environmentalists get is human-haters who are unwilling to confront the people in power. The eco-socialist alternative isn’t covered because it’s the real threat to the system.

It’s really important that the people who see the real issue here begin to make their voices heard. And the real issue is that capitalism and climate change are two names for the same process-a corrupt, unfair human society that is incompatible with humans being part of the global ecosystem. A system that can and must be changed.

People like Lovelock believe apocalypse is inevitable because it is easier for them to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.