James Lovelock: In Memoriam

I was saddened to read the death of James Lovelock yesterday . The founder of Gaia theory talked about the interconnectedness of all of us, and all living systems on earth. In 1979, when Lovelock published the theory, he was mocked by many and ignored by science.?Today his hypothesis is commonplace and is backed by science.

He taught me that by carefully looking at the relationship between things, the liminal space between the words we can understand more about the dance of myriad systems that give us society, and life.??

?I write this in the summer of 2022. There are three main items, or systems, that are dominating the news.?

Slowdown.?

War.?

Climate Change.?

?All three of these systems are game changers in different ways - but it is the relationship between the three that I think matters most to us. Examining these relationships can help us find a way forward working together, and away from the chaos of isolationism and fighting desperate wars over limited resources on a dying planet.

?I think about the three key systems as concentric circles. I have included a very basic graphic to illustrate.

To use Donald Rumsfeld’s immortal phrasing we have a 'known known', a 'known unknown' and an 'unknown unknown'.?

?

Slowdown - Known Known

Inflation, less jobs and slowing growth hurt our pockets today.? These are ‘known-knowns; there is a playbook here: we have had high inflation before. We know that responsible fiscal policy, using interest rates and replacement of ineffective political leadership have worked in the past.?

Admittedly the UK has fared worse than most in the wake of Brexit. Sterlings collapse against the dollar, projected inflation of 10% by autumn have led to the UK, sinking to the bottom of the G7 ? and dropping beneath its comparable European neighbours in terms of average income .

The dismal state of the current leadership and the lines of traffic at Dover make restoring the UK competitive economy an eye watering task... but not impossible. The first hurdle has been cleared with the replacement of the Prime Minister.?

So an economic slowdown is a ‘known known’ with a playbook. The ride will be bumpy but at least a? post-Brexit, post-growth UK is our economy to manage, our politicians to elect and our mess to clean up, best we can.?

War: Known Unknown?

?The second, war, is beginning to look like a medium term problem. It directly impacts the rate of slowdown but in less predictable ways.

?Few countries have become embroiled in more foreign conflicts and have more experience in foreign military policy than Britain. For better or worse Britain knows war. Putin, however, is an unknown entity - exactly how far the son of Stalin’s cook is willing to go to restore what he sees as national pride is impossible to tell. For Britain the war in Ukraine a known unknown.?

?Our naive dependency on the region's exports and lack of cohesion with Europe and our Nato Allies hurts us here too, but sustained effort with our international allies over the coming months and years should bring peace to Ukraine albeit too late for many and at too high a cost.?

Climate Change: Unknown Unknown.?

?The last of the triumvirate, climate change is more woolly sounding and vague. It apparently presents a less immediate threat.?

But the question of what happens on a much hotter planet? That is an unknown unknown. None of us have lived on hotter planets, none of us can predict our reactions, or the directions of millions of interplaying species and systems that make up life on earth, the food on our table, the direction of the winds and the fires in our towns.

Nor can we predict the reaction of men like Putin on a fragmented increasingly uninhabitable and unpredictable earth.??What we can assume based on the last 23 years of Putin's rule is that it wont help peace, security or prosperity. ??

The Common Enemy

The slowdown is because of our reliance on fossil fuel. For example, ammonia is the backbone of fertiliser and responsible for half of world food. Its synthesis is very energy intensive, it relies almost entirely on fossil fuels for its production and its pice has risen by 600% since March 2020. As with Oil and Gas, Russia is the major producer to Europe. In this way, to feed ourselves, we subsidise the business of producing dirty fuel while sponsoring unjust wars on a heating planet.

The war is because of our reliance on fossil fuel. The reason we cant actually defend Ukraine is that Putin has us by the pipeline and over a barrel. We see this every day at the petrol pump. ?But the 4 most important materials for life on earth namely, steel, cement, plastic and the aforementioned ammonia, are also all totally dependent on fossil fuels and until we rehabilitate, fossil fuel dependence in the UK means dependence on Russia.

Climate Change is because of our reliance on fossil fuel. So says science.?

Unchecked, climate change will foreshadow more disruption than we have ever known. ?Much of climate change is and will be irreversible. Because of this, as Lovelock succinctly put it. “I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war.”

?So what do we do?

A green new deal style investment program, started now, with work on climate change will address our most significant long term challenge. But it would also soften the short term slowdown - an offramp from overconsumption of fossil fuels, and significant investment in renewable alternatives rather than a crash as we wean ourselves off our high emissions addiction.

To date our governments have been dismal at the vision and strategy here but there is still time for new leaders to come to the fore or, as with the pandemic, for business to step up where politics falls short.

Politically and professionally. We as individuals have to step up in the interim. By voting for parties that divest and demonstrate an understanding of the science we can point policy in the right direction. By refusing to work for companies that do harm and expanding our work in the climate space we can evolve away from fossil fuels more quickly and shrink the awful medium term prospect of a lasting war with petro-states by making them less geopolitically powerful and relevant.?

Ultimately our work in the outer circle stretches and softens the middle circle which compresses the worst, middle circle of war.?I welcome other comments and suggestions here to improve or disprove the model but I see this shift in focus as the only way forward for next few decades until we are out of the woods.

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In fossil fuel we have become addicted to a very harmful substance and all our political and economic systems are predicated on this addiction. This means we are at the mercy of dealers like Putin and bound to the the current economic storms and future natural disasters they can trigger.?

As with all substance addiction the patterns of external care and consumption have a direct impact on the internal systems: An addict will continue to spend his money on drugs when it is not economically feasible and that will lead depression and harm and helpless rage, an inner state of war. ?

So too for us if we continue on our path.

It's time for rehab.

The long term future of our political, economic and environmental security depends on what we do on oil and gas in the next few years.

If you have ever smoked as I did for a long time then you know the psychological games you can play with yourself for one more cigarette. If you have ever had cancer as my grandfather did you'll know how you can quit too late.

The adventure for the next few decades is to increasingly work with nature to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Restoring power to nature removes power from petro-dictatorships in a virtuous circle that helps us evolve.

Over time our rehabilitation reduces the rate of temperature rise of the planet, giving time to adjust, which in turn reduces the chance of economic hardship, regional dispute and war.

James Lovelock was right in 1979 he is right today, and he will be right 100 years from now. If we are brave, our work from now on rejects our dirty past, grasps our cleaner future and reconciles us to the indefatigable fact: Gaia. All we have, and all we are, is nature.