Environmental Guru Urges Nuclear Energy

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By Marco Evers

James Lovelock is attracting attention again
with his provocative ideas. The former hero of the environmental
movement has called for an end to "green romanticism." The only way to
delay climate catastrophe, says the environmental guru, is through the
massive expansion of nuclear energy.

A few days ago, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking gave a
speech in London in which he said that nuclear war no longer poses the
only threat to humanity's very existence. According to Hawking, the
dangers posed by climate change are now almost equally as great, and we
must do everything that is humanly possible if we are to have any hope
of averting them.

When James Lovelock heard about Hawkings' lecture, three hundred and
fifty kilometers away at his remote estate near Cornwall, he exclaimed
loudly: "Hawking is underestimating the danger."

Lovelock is a chemist, inventor, author and visionary environmental
guru. Using a detector he invented himself, he was the first to provide
evidence of ozone-consuming fluorochlorohydrocarbons (FCHC) in the
atmosphere. More importantly, Lovelock is the inventor of the famous
"Gaia hypothosis," which holds that the planet (which he named after
the Greek goddess of the Earth, Gaia), constantly controls all of its
systems on land, in the water and in the air in such a way as to
preserve life -- almost as if the earth itself were a living organism.

Lovelock's fellow scientists were initially appalled by the New Age
nature of his theory. But now his ideas have not only become a
cornerstone of the environmental movement, but have also acquired a new
name: "Earth System Science."