In Gaia We Trust?

September 2nd, 2006 10:20 AM

     Well, we don’t, but The Washington Post sure does. Remember Gaia – the crackpot idea that “Earth acts like a living organism?” The Post devoted more than 2,400 words to the theory’s creator today with his own loony end-of-the-world scenario.

     Yes, Al Gore fans, we’re all going to be crispy like some KFC dinner. James Lovelock says warming is “going too fast.” “We will burn.”

     The Post piece called “The End of Eden” is particularly well-timed. According to The Australian, “The world's top climate scientists have cut their worst-case forecast for global warming over the next 100 years.”

     That doesn’t stop Lovelock who claims, according to the glowing piece by Postie Michael Powell, that we don’t have much time.

"Our global furnace is out of control. By 2020, 2025, you will be able to sail a sailboat to the North Pole. The Amazon will become a desert, and the forests of Siberia will burn and release more methane and plagues will return."

     Powell did mention that biologists dismissed his Gaia theory, but “Today one could reasonably argue that Gaia theory has transformed scientific understanding of the Earth.”

     Some understanding. Lovelock thinks the few people who survive what they called in one of the Mad Max movies a “pocky-clipse,” will move to the Arctic. “We desperately need a Moses to take us to the Arctic and preserve civilization.”

     He warns it’s “too late to turn back.” But it’s not too late to see yet another example of environmental extremism celebrated by the Post.