It’s Brighton Festival time. On Tuesday, I saw James Lovelock speak about his new book “Revenge of Gaia”. I’m new to the whole gaia thing, but the notion of treating the earth as a holistic system makes a lot of sense to me.
He talked a little bit about Gaia, but much of the talk seemed to be given over to his dislike of wind farms and his pro-nuclear energy stance. Myself, I’m neither anti-nuke nor pro-nuke. He did question much of the evidence regarding nuclear energy that we had been led to believe, claiming that the safety issue of spent nuclear fuel is overrated, and the cost issues of nuclear are mostly because of onerous health & safety legislation.
He quipped that he’d be more than happy to have spent nuclear fuel in his backyard because it might keep the damned wind farm developers off it…
The other main theme was about global warming. Like most scientists, he cheerfully accepts that it’s happening. But his view of what will happen and when seems to be markedly more doom-and-gloom. But he’s still happy, because he just thinks we should prepare more. Oh, and that Britain will probably emerge relatively unscathed because of it’s location.
Overall, I certainly wasn’t convinced he was correct, but he did give me food for thought. Thanks to the wonders of this internet thingy, I can also read his critics at the same time.
Oh—I didn’t buy the book. I’m not that convinced…
Jabbering Giraffe 