23 May 2004 Enviro Guru Says: Adopt Nuclear Power or Suffer Gaian Dystopia

I’m getting a kick out of May 24 articles in the British newspaper the Independent.

It seems that the prominent Greenie James Lovelock has called upon his fellow members of the environmental left to abandon their opposition to nuclear power. Lovelock believes that global warming fears are understated and fears of nuclear power are exaggerated.

I’m enjoying the fact that a leading environmentalist is echoing something we’ve said many times before: If you truly believe carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm and that this warming would have dire results, you presently have two choices: nuclear power or shutting down much of the world’s economic activity.

On this latter, narrow point, Lovelock apparently agrees with us. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, according to the Independent, don’t.

We, of course, believe that the theory that human beings are causing dangerous global warming is vastly overstated, but we like nuclear power’s environmentally-friendly attributes nonetheless.

Lovelock, by the way, is a self-described “outstanding scientist” and “pioneer in the development of environmental awareness.” He is credited by himself and others with creating the “Gaia Theory,” the notion that, as Lovelock puts it on his website, “the planet Earth [is] a self-regulated living being.”

The notion has been adapted by neo-paganists and New Agers, some of whom now worship “Gaia,” regarding the planet Earth as a “goddess.”