Lovelock's impatience with feel-good "Yes, we can" � liberal environmentalism borders on contempt. There are passages in Vanishing that, were it not for their eloquence, could have been uttered by Glenn Beck. The delusional rhetoric about "sustainable development" � peddled by green politicians and businessmen, writes Lovelock, just shows that we have "weaved the sound of the alarm clock into our dreams." � In one of the book's many memorable passages on the green politics of hope, Lovelock compares sustainable development to deathbed snake oil peddled by an alt-medicine quack.
"Just as we as individuals try alternative medicine," � writes Lovelock, "our governments have many offers from alternative business and their lobbies of sustainable ways to "˜save the planet,' and from some green hospice there may come the anodyne of hope." �
But this "final warning" is more than a long and hectoring doctor's talk about an advanced and inoperable cancer. Lovelock brightens up considerably when looking beyond the looming die-off. And once we assume the author's Darwinian and planetary long view, it's easy to share his cosmic wonder and long-term optimism. Lovelock is cautiously hopeful that as many as several hundred million humans will survive the century and carve pockets of civilization into the coming hot state. Our current global civilization is about to end, but there is every reason to "take hope from the fact that our species is unusually tough and is unlikely to go extinct in the coming climate catastrophe." �
Here enters Lovelock the playful futurist. Those who survive will be responsible for maintaining a high-tech, low-impact, low-energy society advanced enough to keep the flame of progress alive but small and smart enough to carefully husband what arable land remains. Lovelock guesses the rump human race will cluster around a few temperate islands in the far northern hemisphere, including his native U.K. He believes that if emergency preparations are made in time""he compares the present moment to 1939""and if the worst-case scenarios of geopolitical conflict are avoided""namely resource scrambles leading to global thermonuclear war""then something resembling a modern and even urban lifestyle could await the survivors. There may even be food critics in this future, which need not resemble a Soylent Green scenario of cannibalism and state-rationed crackers. This future civilization will synthesize food from CO2, nitrogen, water, and a few minerals. Simple amino acids and sugars, Lovelock cheerfully explains, can be used as feedstock for bulk animal and vegetable tissue created in chemical vats from biopsies. Yum!
A quarter century ago, Carl Sagan issued a strange and compelling plea for nuclear disarmament. He urged the superpowers to abolish their thermonuclear arsenals for the sake of mankind's future evolution and eventual colonization of the galaxy. Echoing Sagan, Lovelock believes it is our duty as an intelligent race, the only one in the cosmic neighborhod, to survive. Only by carrying the flame of civilization into the next century will we have a chance to evolve beyond our current tribal-carnivore brains, which are dominated by short-term thinking and thus responsible for our current predicament. Whereas Sagan dreamed of alien contact, Lovelock's promised land is more humble: an evolved species capable of living in balance with Gaia. In the meantime, the Earth will grow and change, as it always has. Life will continue, humans included, even though billions will suffer and die. Gaia, an ageing planet, will roll into the new climate as best she can. In her wise generosity, she will even leave some hospitable land for us, the offending species, "to survive and to live in a way that gives evolution beyond us, into a wiser and more intelligent animal, a chance." �
Alexander Zaitchik is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and AlterNet contributing writer.
 � 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141081/
"Just as we as individuals try alternative medicine," � writes Lovelock, "our governments have many offers from alternative business and their lobbies of sustainable ways to "˜save the planet,' and from some green hospice there may come the anodyne of hope." �
But this "final warning" is more than a long and hectoring doctor's talk about an advanced and inoperable cancer. Lovelock brightens up considerably when looking beyond the looming die-off. And once we assume the author's Darwinian and planetary long view, it's easy to share his cosmic wonder and long-term optimism. Lovelock is cautiously hopeful that as many as several hundred million humans will survive the century and carve pockets of civilization into the coming hot state. Our current global civilization is about to end, but there is every reason to "take hope from the fact that our species is unusually tough and is unlikely to go extinct in the coming climate catastrophe." �
Here enters Lovelock the playful futurist. Those who survive will be responsible for maintaining a high-tech, low-impact, low-energy society advanced enough to keep the flame of progress alive but small and smart enough to carefully husband what arable land remains. Lovelock guesses the rump human race will cluster around a few temperate islands in the far northern hemisphere, including his native U.K. He believes that if emergency preparations are made in time""he compares the present moment to 1939""and if the worst-case scenarios of geopolitical conflict are avoided""namely resource scrambles leading to global thermonuclear war""then something resembling a modern and even urban lifestyle could await the survivors. There may even be food critics in this future, which need not resemble a Soylent Green scenario of cannibalism and state-rationed crackers. This future civilization will synthesize food from CO2, nitrogen, water, and a few minerals. Simple amino acids and sugars, Lovelock cheerfully explains, can be used as feedstock for bulk animal and vegetable tissue created in chemical vats from biopsies. Yum!
Alexander Zaitchik is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist and AlterNet contributing writer.
 � 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141081/
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