Gaia And The Climate Emergency

Amid the doom-laden exhortations to change our ways, let us remember that we are striving to create a more beautiful world, and not sustain, with growing sacrifice, the current one. We are not just seeking to survive. We are not just facing doom; we are facing a glorious possibility. We are offering people not a world of less, not a world of sacrifice, not a world where you are just going to have to enjoy less and suffer more — no, we are offering a world of more beauty, more joy, more connection, more love, more fulfilment, more exuberance, more leisure, more music, more dancing, and more celebration. The most inspiring glimpses you’ve ever had about what life can be — that is what we are offering.” Charles Eisenstein

“We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we have lost our connection to ourselves.” Andy Goldsworthy

“These bears, these trees, the flying squirrels……and the magnificent dance between all of these beings…… it is for them that I work, it is to them and not the system destroying them that I give my loyalty, it is to them and for them that I dedicate my life. That is the least I or any of us can do for the planet that — who — gave us our own lives, that — who — feeds us, sings us awake in the mornings and to sleep at night — the planet who welcomes us at our beginnings and to whom we all return at our ends. And as Aldo Leopold, the father of wildlife ecology, made clear so many years ago, this is the right — and beautiful — thing to do.” Derrick Jensen in “Bright Green Lies” by Jensen, Keith, and Wilbert.

Gaia. A short word. A concept with the most amazing transformational potential in helping us understand how we interact with our living home. Given this potential, it seems tragic that the Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock has not gained more traction.

One of the questions that came to mind when starting to write was whether we really need yet another writer banging on about the environmental crisis and the same old issues, like Coldplay warming up their greatest hits. You have heard them before but do you really want to hear them yet again?

There are already countless books telling us about the multiple crises. For example “This Changes Everything” by Naomi Klein, known for her attack on neo-liberalism and the influence of corporations on politics in her earlier book “The Shock Doctrine”. Except nothing changed.

Although we should have got the email and altered course, societal response to climate breakdown is happening at an imperceptible pace, like a snail on Mogadon, and at times things are actually heading in the wrong direction. We are still building new roads, expanding airport capacity, constructing HS2 through ancient woodlands, exploring for more oil. When you are in an emergency you must do all the right things and none of the wrong things. It’s that simple. As former US President Barack Obama so succinctly put it, “Don’t do stupid stuff”!

So if Klein was correct, and climate change does change everything, why haven’t we responded? Critics on the political right, see Klein’s analysis and her strident demand for a change of approach, as like a water-melon: green on the outside, red on the inside, a green Trojan horse whose belly is full of red, Marxist, socio-economic doctrine, an attack on the freedom of the individual, another Commie telling us how to live our lives. In the words of Klein, paraphrasing her opponents, climate change is seen as:

“…a hoax being perpetrated by liberals to force them to change their light bulbs, live in Soviet-style tenements, and surrender their SUVs…..For these right-wingers, opposition to climate change has become as central to their belief system as low taxes, gun ownership, and opposition to abortion”. ‘As Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor Nigel Lawson liked to claim, “Green is the new Red…..a license to intrude, to interfere, to regulate.”

In response to this perceived threat, the political right has funded bogus think-tanks to boggle the brains of deniers and sceptics. As a result, the fossil fuel industries have continued to flourish long after we should have transitioned to clean energy, and millions of jobs in oil exploration and coal mining still depend on fossil fuel investments. As Upton Sinclair famously observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” There are many people who stand to lose their livelihood unless there is a rapid, equitable and well-supported transition to green employment.

In a way the libertarians have a point. The interventionist measures needed to change course require state action and interference on a massive scale, a sort of green Marshall Plan, sometimes referred to as a Green New Deal, and a very inconvenient truth.

This has the potential for ideological warfare. Just as many right-wingers are wary of measures to tackle global warming, there are many on the ideological left who take the same view as Klein, that the climate crisis is an opportunity to pursue a socialist, egalitarian agenda.

For example, writing as far back as 1974, Andre Gorz in “Ecology as Politics” wrote:

“It is therefore time to end the pretence that ecology is, by itself, sufficient: the ecological movement is not an end itself, but a stage in the larger struggle. It can throw up obstacles to capitalist development and force a number of changes. But when, after exhausting every means of coercion and deceit, capitalism begins to work its way out of the ecological impasse, it will assimilate ecological necessities as technical constraints, and adapt the conditions of exploitation to them.”

In Gorz’s view, without social change and wealth redistribution, we will just have what Ivan Illich referred to as the “modernisation of poverty”. Gorz proposed, all those years ago, the need to break with growth and the ideology of ruthless competition, claiming instead that:

“The only things worthy of each are those which are good for all; the only things worthy of being produced are those which neither privilege nor diminish anyone; it is possible to be happier with less affluence, for in a society without privilege no-one will be poor.”

The pursuit of the necessary lifestyle changes may have therefore not been helped by those on the ideological left being opportunist, and seeing the climate and ecological crisis as a lever to pursue a socialist agenda, like the ubiquitous Socialist Worker placards popping up whenever there is a popular cause to highjack. Gorz was surprisingly even-handed in recognising that socialism has just as much an ability to wreak environmental damage as capitalism, not always a welcome message to those on the left:

“Socialism is no better than capitalism if it makes use of the same tools. The total domination of nature inevitably entails a domination of people by the techniques of domination.”

Others on the left criticise calls for reduced consumption as pulling up the rope ladder that could lift people out of poverty. The average citizen in the developing world is much less responsible for environmental damage than their counterpart in developed world. The pontifications of wealthy Westerners, calling for reduced consumption or population control, can be insulting to those struggling to feed and clothe themselves, or relying on a large family as their social support network.

Naomi Klein seems to be a late arrival in terms of her understanding of the climate crisis, and seizes on it as a tool with which to seek “climate justice”, a catalyst for social change and income redistribution. Many of those with power and wealth, the “shock doctors”, understandably see climate justice as a threat, ironically causing them to dig their heels in and resist environmental measures which they may see as a slippery slope to remove their wealth and advantage.

 

Ironically the opportunist approach of Klein and some on the Left, of using climate change to pursue a neo-Marxist agenda, may have inadvertently provoked reactionary forces, feeling threatened by the egalitarian onslaught, into delaying some measures to tackle climate change which they might otherwise have supported. The wealthy may take the view, to coin a phrase used from the days when the threat was nuclear attack rather than a destabilised climate, “better dead than red.”

In a telling sentence in “This Changes Everything” Klein has the insight to acknowledge her opportunism: “I am convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity..…on an even greater scale. As part of the project of getting emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs, and reinvigorate democracy from the ground up.”

Klein is critical of the lack of progress at all the international conferences, describing one she attended as “a very costly and high-carbon group therapy session”. It seems that several years after she wrote, the conferences are just as carbon-intensive, with the latest Conference of the Parties (COP) talks in Glasgow corralled by the UK government business minister unkindly nicknamed “Air-miles Alok” (Sharma).

While her opportunism may be criticised, to her credit Klein does understand the climate science well, including the risk of triggering non-linear tipping points and extremely dangerous and confusingly named positive feedback loops. These positive feedbacks occur, for example, when warming causes frozen methane hydrates to thaw, releasing more methane, thereby raising temperatures only to cause more thawing. Or forests burn, turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources. Or white ice in the Arctic that used to reflect heat and light melts, to be replaced by heat-absorbing dark water.

Recognising the full seriousness of our situation, Klein states:

“Two degrees now looks like a utopian dream….we’re on track for a four degree warmer world…there is no certainty that adaptation to a four degree world is possible…….These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one…climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species.”

As Klein clearly came to comprehend, if you are not scared you have not understood the science.

The calls for lifestyle changes, as well as creating rifts between political foes, also risk creating generational discord. So calls for restraint may be seen as a way of denying the next generation the pleasures of driving and flying, a case of the baby-boomer Beatles generation who had it all, calling time on the party for Generation Z, just as they were getting starting, piling climate misery on the Covid lockdown punishments.

As well as the political and inter-generational conflict risks, there is also a huge debate on whether change is needed at the level of individuals, by government, or by big business. Under the present status quo, there is a cosy conspiracy where people blame politicians, or big business or “the system”, arguing that it does not make enough of a difference what one individual does. On the other side of this comfortable arrangement, politicians fail to change the system, blaming the populace, saying that people do not want to make sacrifices. Meanwhile corporations communicate that they are just producing the goods that people want, and are only too pleased to protect their profits and shift the focus to micro-changes at the level of individual, sometimes by pushing the concept of personal carbon footprints. There is an exasperating impasse where everyone can blame someone else as their justification for not changing. So nothing changes.

Even this debate about who is responsible is politicised. For example left-wing author Noam Chomsky stated:

“First question is ‘As individuals what can we do?’ — the answer is: practically nothing! What could be done and always has been done in history is by people who are organised. The labour movement, civil rights movement, women’s movement, anti-war movement, environmental movement. These can do things. And that’s one of the reasons why powerful systems are so intent on atomising people.”

Back to the plethora of publications on environmental themes. In another classic from the environmental genre, now reclassified and located in the horror section in your local bookshop, Mark Lynas sets out starkly in “Six Degrees” the changes that we can expect to see with each degree of warming. A horrifying sequence progresses through the book, with each degree warmer becoming more nightmarish, especially when one considers that we are now on track for between three and four degrees of warming. Not a book to read just before bedtime.

“Six Degrees” is described by the “Financial Times” as: “An apocalyptic primer of what to expect as the world heats up”, with every small increase in global temperature. As the blurb says, “Entire nations are uninhabitable. Entire populations have been wiped out. Arid land cracks and peels in some areas of the globe. In others, deluges of flood water ravage the earth. Welcome to a world six degrees warmer. Welcome to our future.” Quite a bad day in the office.

Lynas, feeling like “…Dante at the gates of the Inferno…”, paints a graphic picture of the nightmares in store, a degree at a time. By the end of the book you will either be out on the streets with Extinction Rebellion, or hiding under the duvet. Getting active is the preferable option, with action sometimes described as the antidote to despair. As Lynas eloquently puts it: “Getting depressed about the situation now is like sitting inert in your living room and watching the kitchen catch fire, and then getting more and more miserable as the fire spreads throughout the house — rather than grabbing an extinguisher and dousing the flames.”

As has been explicitly highlighted in the paper “The Future of the Human Niche”, authors Chi Xu, Timothy A. Kohler, Timothy M. Lenton, Jens-Christian Svenning, and Marten Scheffer explain what is at stake, is the very survival of humanity and the biosphere on which we depend:

“All species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception…….global warming will affect ecosystems as well as human health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, and economic growth in many ways. The impacts are projected to increase steeply with the degree of warming”.

The climate is likely to change more in the next 50 years than it has in the previous 6000 and we have already set in train events that may now already be catastrophic.

Along with books like those of Klein and Lynas, there are ideas that have sparked movements, like the transition towns concept started by Rob Hopkins, or the doughnut economics theory of Kate Raworth. The concepts, movements and theories are part of the solution and we cover some of them in later chapters.

There are also many potential practical solutions to climate change and loss of bio-diversity, in terms of tree-planting, installing insulation and renewable energy, and the wider adoption of a more plant-based diet. However social movements and practical measures are only part of the solution.

What seems lacking is the adoption of these and other solutions at anything like the pace and scale needed. Alongside the technical solutions we need changes to lifestyles, to reduce consumption and travel. To persuade those with wealth and power to shift towards a life of voluntary simplicity and radical localism, requires a new and powerful vision. We need to somehow persuade those with untold wealth in off-shore accounts, currently mesmerised by ludicrous, vanity space projects, to divert their wealth into environmental projects back home.

 

 

Interms of raising awareness, Extinction Rebellion (XR) succeeded in their aim of getting the climate and ecological emergency in the headlines. Their protests pushed the UK parliament to declare a climate emergency, getting the establishment of a citizens’ assembly on the climate, and net-zero target-setting. The strategic planning behind Extinction Rebellion makes extensive reference in its analysis of successful protest movements, to the work of Erica Chenoeth, and her theory that to have the best chance of success, a movement needs over 3.5% of the population on the streets. For all its remarkable impact, XR has fallen well short of those numbers. Amazingly there are still people in denial, but for some it is just a way of coping.

Until recently those of us trying to raise the alarm have been a tiny minority. The numbers achieved by XR on the streets for the UK rebellions in April and October 2019 were perhaps around 30,000 — very far from the 3.5% of the population the theorists tells us is needed. That would require numbers approaching three million, more than the two million who protested against the Iraq war, when even that number was not enough to prevent ghastly mistakes being made. The September 2020 XR rebellion, which saw some inspired and creative actions, saw these numbers drop, impacted by several factors including the Covid virus.

Likewise Greta Thunberg, and the school strikers of “Fridays for the Future”, have voiced the concern of their generation in a movement that has snowballed from a brave lone teenager outside the Swedish parliament, to an international wave of protest.

After a lifetime of moderation, veteran broadcaster David Attenborough has also spoken out with greater clarity and urgency, connecting with viewers both inside and outside the establishment, reaching a wider audience.

However after a brief respite during the virus lockdown, the death machine that is killing our planet rumbles on towards the edge of the precipice. Or worse, like the roadrunner with legs still running, it keeps going unaware that it has already gone over the edge.

However we are aiming here to explore the concept of Gaia, rather than focus on the plethora of perils which are covered so well elsewhere. The theme to be pursued in the promotion of a new faith, is that the environmental crisis is due as much to a deficiency and dysfunction of the human spirit, as it is due to the environmental crises, which are just the symptoms of a sick patient. We have failed so far to come up with a source of inspiration so powerful that it motivates the masses to change our lives sufficiently to make a real difference, to make sacrifices with a sense of purpose, and to unite the whole world around a common, shared vision.

Many of us know what we should do in theory, in terms of not flying or driving, eating less meat, and consuming less, but it is not happening at the required scale or speed. We are not mobilising anything like the number of people needed as activists. Being the change you want to see in the world, as Gandhi advocated, is no good if the rest of the world carries on in the fast lane. We cannot stop the world because we want to get off. We are all in this together, each part of the collective global environment. What happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas.

Perhaps the reason social change is not happening, is because consuming less is not a popular message. As George Monbiot once said with his typical rousing rhetoric: “No-one ever rioted for austerity”. Indeed, as President Macron discovered, when the French attempted to introduce a carbon tax, citizens such as the gilets jaunes are far more likely to riot for greater consumption, and against taxes which may be perceived to unjustly impact most on those with least. It was a case of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité et un réservoir plein de carburant s’il vous plaÎt” (Liberty, egality, fraternity and a full tank of fuel please). Likewise when carbon taxation was proposed in a 2021 Swiss referendum, the measures were narrowly voted down.

Part of the problem in mobilising a meaningful response to the climate and ecological emergency is that we are much better at responding to events and crisis management, than exercising the precautionary principle. We generally wait for disaster to strike before responding, particularly when that response involves major sacrifices, changes of lifestyle, and voluntary simplicity in sufficient numbers.

When dealing with Covid we failed to prevent the conditions in which the virus could easily hop species in the wet market in Wuhan, and then, at least in the UK, repeatedly only locked down after each wave of infection, or after new variants had been allowed in via international travel. With rare exceptions, nations only made emergency responses to events, rarely if ever anticipating, or planning ahead.

The problem is that with the climate and ecological crisis, by the time massive disaster strikes on a scale that motivates enough people to be ready for change, it will be far too late. It is not as though we have not had warnings. The unfolding crisis has been a bit like waiting for Godot. The warning signs are piling up. The climate and ecological emergency is now so critical that the flashing red lights are permeating through into the mainstream media, that had seemed designed to prevent the news seeping out, with its filter aiming to protect vested interests. The evidence becomes clearer every day. It has been possible for reactionary elements of the media to deny the reality of climate change for several decades, but in the words of Bill McKibben, the founder of “350.org”, and author of polemics including “The End of Nature”, “….you can’t argue with physics.”

There is a lot of psychology at play in the public response. Some are still in denial or sceptical about the science, though this number is diminishing. Others think it is already too late, so we might as well go out with a party. Others use displacement, so seek to shift the blame onto America or China, ignoring the reason for many of the Chinese emissions being that they are busy manufacturing the latest gadgets and gewgaws we order on Amazon. For others, the coping mechanism is distraction. So anything rather than think about the crisis, any latest gossip about a celebrity car crash or series on Netflix or television, anything that makes things seem more normal is a bonus.

The anger directed by some motorists at the incredibly brave activists of “Insulate Britain” shows the intensity of what happens when the public’s protective carapace of normality is threatened. Many of us compartmentalise, so for example the 2021 “heat dome” in North America, or the extraordinary floods in Germany, or fires in Australia are a problem for “other” people, not something that need concern us. To understand and make use of the psychology behind how we respond to climate change, the Climate Psychology Alliance website is a valuable resource.

So it is interesting to see at what point the penny drops for the majority of the world’s population. When will the mainstream masses of us “get it”, and realise that ”this means me”, this means that perhaps it is not such a good idea to get in my car each day or take that holiday flight?

Even after the pause for reflection provided by the Covid crisis, when the roads and skies cleared, and many wanted to “build back better”, there has been pent up demand to resume business as usual, and even to make up for lost time. For many people during the Covid lockdowns, there was a brief reconnection with the local community and with nature. The streets fell silent as traffic dwindled, and many expressed the wish that we should rebuild a greener future. People noticed the natural world around them again, and observed that birdsong seemed more vibrant, the colour of the sky brighter without pollution. Nature, which abhors a vacuum, crept back in as it was given space, like a thief in the night, but this was a thief who gave joy rather than stole. Like the goats in Llandudno that came down off the hills into the briefly deserted town centre. As Rachel Carson urged us many years ago in “Silent Spring” we rediscovered “a sense of wonder”, to experience nature in new, unusual, astounding ways.

The renaissance and rapid breeding of nature writing has seen inspiring books like “The Old Ways” or “Understory” by Robert Macfarlane, “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake, “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald, “Wilding” by Isabella Tree, “English Pastoral” by James Rebanks or “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben. This popularity shows our desire to connect and rediscover, far more encouraging than the ironic naming of roads on new estates after the wildlife or plants that used to be there! Kingfisher Drive and Primrose Road indeed! More like Asphalt Avenue and Concrete Close.

Just as many of us have lost our deep sense of connection with the natural world, we have also sacrificed lasting and meaningful community for consumerism, so that we may now not know our neighbours or many people in our local area, creating an aching void where once there were close-knit bonds and intricate relationships.

Hermetically sealed in a double-glazed home, surfaces sprayed with disinfectant, yard covered with Astro-turf, with food arriving in a van rather than from our garden, water from a tap not a well, entertained over the internet at the press of button, with neighbours we may barely know, this is the age of separation. As well as allowing ourselves to have become separated from nature, the social glue that joined us together has been dissolved by the acid of market forces, and the relentless route march of technology that was meant to improve our lives, but has instead enslaved us. We are trapped in Jevon’s paradox, so that as devices become more energy-efficient, they multiply in number, so we end up consuming more.

Rather than listen to stories from our elders, or be entertained by the strumming of a local muso, we are mesmerised by the internet, flicking at the press of button between endless channels, desperate for something novel to titillate our jaded palates. We are more likely to argue with neighbours over parking, than share a pint in the local pub. The bobby on the beat has been replaced by CCTV, games in the street evicted by the motor car, and childhood subsumed by endless screen-time and the exaggerated fear of stranger danger.

The filaments of the fragile gossamer web of community have been torn asunder, as we cower in snail shells, isolated, independent, and alone. We have converted our currency from gossip to Bitcoin, beguiled into believing we are a world apart, superior and separate, arrogantly assuming that we don’t need nature or neighbours. Knitting and nattering has been replaced by Netflix and Nintendo. Never mind silent Spring, more like lonely planet.

Little wonder that affluent societies are plagued by depression and anxiety, even when in theory we have it all, badly infected with what Oliver James termed “affluenza”. Deep down we know what we have lost and that something important is missing. So we crave meaning, social contact or the glimpse of a remnant of nature among the growing ecological deserts. Shifting baseline syndrome may cause us to not even know exactly what we are missing, yet we still feel this emptiness in our daily lives, seeking in vain to fill the growing ecological, social and spiritual void with gormless gadgets and gewgaws, technofixes from a Pandora’s Box we dared to open and can never close, mourning a loss of innocence in a guilty world.

As Paul Kingsnorth says in “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist”:

“We have made ourselves caged animals, and all the gadgets in the world cannot compensate for what we have lost. Humans are animals……and there is something in us that still yearns for that great conversation. We need it, as we need water and air and food.”

So we need to repair and rebuild, restore and rewild, renovate and reconnect. Writing in the preface to “Coming Back to Life” by Joanna Macy and Molly Brown, the Dalai Lama states:

“Although it is increasingly evident how interdependent we are in virtually every aspect of our lives, this seems to make little difference to the way we think about ourselves in relation to our fellow-beings and our environment. We live at a time when human actions have developed a creative and destructive power that has become global in scope. And yet we fail to cultivate a corresponding sense of responsibility. Most of us are concerned only about people and property that are directly related to us……. It is no longer appropriate to think only in terms of even my nation or my country, let alone my village. If we are to overcome the problems we face, we need what I have called a sense of universal responsibility rooted in love and kindness for our human brothers and sisters.”

Weare like the proverbial frog in a pan of heating water. Drop it into hot water and it jumps straight out, but heat it slowly and the frog stays put and boils alive. So when will the majority really embrace change? The signs are not good. Even as Australia. Siberia, California and the Amazon burn, and the icecaps melt, with species going extinct by the day, people still get in their cars for the daily commute. “Not my problem”. “Science and geo-engineering will fix it”. ”It’s all the fault of big corporations”. “It’s all China’s fault”.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it is very unlikely that science can fix it, and any attempt would be so risky as to be a last resort that could go very wrong, relying on technology which is untested at scale. We urgently need to protect what Lovelock calls the “vital organs” of Gaia before it is too late. If we are “waiting for Godot” he better turn up soon.

The warnings have been around for years though. In “Beyond the Limits”, published in 1992, there are multiple examples of scenarios of civilisation going into overshoot and collapse. “The Last Generation” by Fred Pearce likewise warned us of the future our grandchildren face, with our own the last generation to live in a time of plenty.

The multiple crises we face have led numerous councils to declare a “climate and ecological emergency”. Similarly, the UK parliament (not yet the government) has declared a climate emergency.

As far back as 2005, James Hansen, while Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, warned:

“We are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemption.”

In “The Last Generation — How nature will take her revenge for climate change” Fred Pearce also does not pull his punches. When doing his research he comments:

“The more I learn ….the more scared I get……….”

As Wally Broecker, one of the high priests of abrupt planetary processes, puts it:

‘Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.’”

However we will avoid going into detail here about the multiple environmental crises we face. What Aldo Leopold called the “wounds of the world” are now well known. Rather than cataloguing the many threats, we are going to focus instead on why a new faith can play a part in our salvation, a faith that treats the living earth with reverence. The need for a new faith still needs to be based on hard science. As Paul Ehrlich says in “The Machinery of Nature”, the need “does not diminish the absolutely crucial role that good science must play if our over-extended civilisation is to save itself. Values must not be based on scientific nonsense.”

We need a transcending vision that unites all of humanity. We also need a solution that recognises that there is as much a crisis of the human spirit, as an environmental crisis. We need a vision and a concept that is sufficiently powerful to inspire sacrifices in material comfort and pleasure, to invest instead in our common future and saving the planet’s miraculous biodiversity.

Faced with a choice between buying an Aston Martin or planting a couple of acres of woodland, the vision needs to be powerful enough to inspire the right choice for the planet — quite an ambition! However, consider the view of the blue jewel of our fragile planet when seen from space, or the natural wonders of an Attenborough documentary, and if it is a choice between a flash car or a secure future and preserving those wonders, the right choice is surely clear.

Part of the problem is that we have largely lost our connection with nature, something that Charles Eisenstein, in “The Ascent of Humanity”, diagnoses as being at the root of the crisis. It is this perceived separation between self and nature, that has allowed many of us to lay waste to our natural heritage, to litter, pollute and over-consume.

This need for an appreciation of our connectedness is also explored by Jeremy Lent in ”Web of Meaning”, in which he encourages us to integrate scientific and ancient wisdom to find our true place in the universe: “Our mainstream worldview has expired. What will replace it? A worldview of deep interconnectedness. As our civilisation careens towards a precipice of climate breakdown, ecological destruction, and gaping inequality, people are losing their existential moorings. Our dominant worldview of disconnection tells us we are split between mind and body, separate from each other, and at odds with the natural world. This worldview has passed its expiration date. It’s not just dangerous — it’s based on a series of flawed assumptions that have been superseded by modern scientific findings. Once we shift our worldview another world becomes possible.”

Paul Kingsnorth writing in his manifesto authored with Dougald Hine, “The Dark Mountain Project”, states:

“For a very long time, we imagined that ‘nature’ was something that happened elsewhere. The damage we did to it might be regrettable, but needed to be weighed against the benefits here and now. And in the worst-case scenario, there would always be some kind of Plan B. Perhaps we could make for the moon, where we could survive in lunar colonies under giant bubbles as we planned our expansion across the galaxy.”

“But there is no Plan B, and the bubble, it turns out, is where we have been living all the while. The bubble is that delusion of isolation under which we have laboured for so long. The bubble has cut us off from life on the only planet we have, or are ever likely to have. The bubble is civilisation. Consider the structures on which that bubble has been built. Its foundations are geological: coal, oil, gas — millions upon millions of years of ancient sunlight, dragged from the depths of the planet and burned with abandon.”

Kingsnorth has a vision of “uncivilisation”, not barbarism, but a perspective which is not anthropocentric. This analysis is understandable given the crimes of ecocide for which humanity is responsible, though care should be taken not to cross a line into the realms of outright misanthropy. Kingsnorth continues his theme in “Confessions of an environmentalist”:

“I became an ‘environmentalist’ because of a strong emotional reaction to wild places and the other-than-human world: to beech trees and hedgerows and pounding waterfalls, to songbirds and sunsets, to the flying fish in the Java Sea and the canopy of the rainforest at dusk when the gibbons come to the waterside to feed. From that reaction came a feeling, which became a series of thoughts: that such things are precious for their own sake, that they are food for the human soul and that they need people to speak for them, and defend them from, other people, because they cannot speak our language and we have forgotten how to speak theirs.”

Like the authors of “Bright Green Lies”, Kingsnorth is critical of anthropocentric thinking aimed at saving humanity at the expense of the natural world, continuing in his confessions:

“We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called ‘sustainability’. What does this curious, plastic word mean? It does not mean defending the non-human world from the ever-expanding empire of Homo sapiens sapiens, though some of its adherents like to pretend it does, even to themselves. It means sustaining human civilisation at the comfort level which the world’s rich people — us — feel is their right, without destroying the ‘natural capital’ or the ‘resource base’ which is needed to do so.“

“It is, in other words, an entirely human-centred piece of politicking, disguised as concern for ‘the planet’. In a very short time — just over a decade — this worldview has become all-pervasive. It is voiced by the President of the USA and the President of Anglo-Dutch Shell and many people in-between. The success of environmentalism has been total — at the price of its soul.”

“Let me offer up just one example of how this pact has worked. If ‘sustainability’ is about anything, it is about carbon. Carbon and climate change. To listen to most environmentalists today, you would think that these were the only things in the world worth talking about. The business of ‘sustainability’ is the business of preventing carbon emissions. Carbon emissions threaten a potentially massive downgrading of our prospects for material advancement as a species. They threaten to unacceptably erode our resource base and put at risk our vital hoards of natural capital.”

Kingsnorth is critical of this shift in the green movement from a love of the natural world, towards an almost exclusive, utilitarian focus on carbon reduction, describing much of modern environmentalism as like “the catalytic converter on the silver SUV of the global economy…..a desperate attempt to prevent Gaia from hiccupping and wiping out our coffee shops and broadband connections.”

True environmentalism is much more radical than just cutting carbon. The new faith in Gaia should be based in hard science, however as Theodore Roszak says in “Where the Wasteland Ends”, even when confined to rational and scientific principles, ecology has the potential to be subversive:

“Its sensibility — holistic, receptive, trustful, largely non-tampering, deeply grounded in aesthetic intuition — is a radical deviation from traditional science. Ecology does not systematise by mathematical generalisation or materialist reductionism, but by the almost sensuous intuiting of natural harmonies on the largest scale. Its patterns are not those of numbers, but of unity in process; its psychology borrows from Gestalt and is an awakening of wholes greater than the sum of their parts. In spirit, discipline is contemplative and therapeutic, a concernful listening with the third ear”.

As Bill Devall puts it in “Simple in Means, Rich in Ends”-

“The subversive insight of ecology is that not only is everything connected with everything else but there is a literal intermingling of person and Other, of mind-in-nature.”

The idea that everything is connected, is the first of the four “laws” of ecology, proposed by biologist Barry Commoner in 1971, in “The Closing Circle”:

“1. Everything is connected to everything else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.

2. Everything must go somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature knows best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system”.

4. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms.”

Environmental historian Donald Worster states that:

“…..the science of ecology has not taught us very much new in the organisation of nature, but it has reawakened in us intuitions long suppressed in the era of scientific reductionism.”

The philosopher J. Baird Callicott states:

“….ecology has made plain to us the fact that we are enfolded, involved, and engaged within the living, terrestrial, environment…” and suggested that ecology and quantum physics converge toward the same metaphysical notions and that the concepts used in both complement each other.

Satish Kumar rightly proclaims that love is the answer, love for each other and the natural world. Clapping for the NHS, carers and essential workers during the worst of the Covid crisis, got everyone in streets united in common cause, in a way we have not seen for generations. We were briefly all “on the same page”, working together, facing in the same direction. We were just waiting for the opportunity and excuse to rediscover the ancient bonds of community that remain dormant, waiting to emerge.

Itis proposed that the need for a new Gaia consciousness is critical to solving environmental crises, and as a shared faith could unite us all again. Although the concept put forward by James Lovelock gained surprising recognition in some scientific circles, it seems to have so far failed to gain sufficient traction to permeate into the mainstream population. To have any impact, the concept of Gaia needs to break into the everyday lives of billions of people as a new way of thinking about the world, and to inspire a passion to care for our living home.

It is important to appreciate the transformational potential of the insight that the concept provides, that we are part of a living organism on a planetary scale. The lack of a wider appreciation of the Gaia hypothesis is a bit like being given a leaflet with the layout when entering a maze, and then stumbling around lost for hours clutching the leaflet, wishing “if only we knew the way” while using the leaflet as a makeshift fan or sunshade. Or going to the theatre, and choosing to sit facing the opposite direction to the stage, and then complaining how boring it is. Or putting the late football genius Maradona in charge of filing duties in an office. Or making Lewis Hamilton drive a fork-lift truck in an Amazon fulfilment centre. We are a living part of the most incredible being but most of the time fail to appreciate its wonder.

Of course, being part of Gaia at this time is also to suffer, and to be aware of what is happening to this being is desperately sad and painful, the awful destruction and loss of species and habitats, the pollution and despoiling of nature. One of the saddest books I have ever read is “Witness to Extinction: How we failed to save the Yangtze river dolphin” by Samuel Turvey. Gone forever. Victim of our greed, our apathy, our carelessness. This is happening on our watch, not something to blame on careless ancestors like the infamous dodo. Bill McKibben went so far as referring, in his 1990 classic, to our position as being “The End of Nature”.

However there is also hope. We can achieve extraordinary things when we all work together. Just as vaccines against Covid were developed in record time, we may yet salvage victory for Gaia out of the jaws of defeat, and shift from the role of destroyer to steward.

Part of the problem is our anthropocentric view of the world, almost as though we have not processed the discovery that the Earth is not at the centre of the solar system, but is in reality just another planet that happens to be the right distance from a suitable star, the “Goldilocks” planet, neither too hot like Venus, nor too cold like Mars.

This Gaia consciousness seeks to encourage a different way of seeing our world, and a new spirituality based on an awareness that we are part of a complex living being, which is immeasurably greater than the sum of its parts. Rather than just reforming our existing economic and social systems, we also we need a revolution of spirit, and a more biocentric, ecocentric view of our world.

This consciousness aims to go beyond the limitations of reform environmentalism, to examine what the Gaia hypothesis is, and why it is of critical importance alongside practical measures, in bringing about change on a global scale.

To have any chance of turning humanity away from the precipice, we need to rediscover a lasting love for our communities and the natural world, and develop a reverence for Gaia that makes damaging her unconscionable. We need a new way of living that puts more back in than we take out, encouraging us to make transformational changes to our everyday lives.

The late Polly Higgins proposed the crime of ecocide, that damaging the natural world should be as great a crime as murder. Native communities see geographic features as alive, and in some cases rivers or other ecosystems have been given legal status as beings in their own right. Reconnecting with the natural world in this way would make damaging a river or forest unthinkable.

We live in dark days. An appreciation of Gaia offers hope, a faith not to replace existing religions or compete with them, but to sit alongside other faiths or no conventional faith.

Just as there are climate tipping points, there are tipping points in societies. We saw that with the ending of Apartheid, or the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Systems that seem permanent can unexpectedly crumble overnight. The problem with the climate crisis is, that by the time the majority “get it”, things will be so bad that we are already into a salvage operation, resorting to what Professor Jem Bendell has described as deep adaption, preparing for collapse, and making the best of a very bad situation. In the meantime, we are waiting for the majority to get the email.

We all depend on each other, as we are part of each other’s environment. Having tried to deny, as Margaret Thatcher did, that there is such a thing as society, we are now obliged to confront the awful truth that we all need to work together if we want to survive. What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. In the words of the adage, “What comes around goes around”, whether it is pollution of the atmosphere or the forever chemicals which accumulate in our bodies from non-stick frying pans and electrical insulation.

In discussing the need for a new faith to unite us, we should aim to do so in a way that aims to reach everyone, rather than as an academic text. It is hoped that it is a message that can break out of the ”green ghetto”, to be accessible for everyone, with a vision and an inspiration to connect, that is meaningful for all humanity.

It is proposed that alongside activism on the streets, the rebellion for life needs a spiritual component, not to replace existing religions, but to work alongside them. If we revered Gaia and protected her, we could not carry on living our lives as we do now. We would think whether each action makes the world a better or worse place, whether the balance sheet at the end of each of our days leaves a debt or a credit. We need to cultivate reverence and care, and that is where Gaia-awareness is urgently needed in the modern world. The problem is not capitalism or communism, but separation and selfishness. We need to connect to each other and to nature, and pursue a selfless life dedicated to our faith for the future. Gaia.