A Way Forward in Uncertain Times

It has been nearly three decades since James Lovelock published a scientific premise for the Earth as a living organism. He based his work on observations that show a self-regulating zone of life call the “biosphere.” Gaia: A New Way of Viewing the Earth suggested that living communities regulate the life functions of a living planet.

Human beings are mostly unaware of how temperature, recycling, energy flow, and population are managed on Earth, yet humans affect outcomes and are affected in turn by them.

Consider what Lovelock observed about the differences in atmospheric composition among “dead” planets and a “living planet.” Planets with high concentrations of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere (Venus and Mars) are either broiling or ice blocks. They contain little or no life. Earth before the advent of life averaged about 300° C surface temperature. With the current envelope of life on Earth, the average temperature is 13° C.

Organisms evolved in oceans that began to remove carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. Gradually nitrogen and oxygen replaced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A hydrologic cycle formed and the Earth began to cool to conditions that allowed life to proliferate.

For nearly two billion years the plankton of the oceans, lakes and later trees and land plants of Earth sequestered carbon from the air incorporating it into their forms. As life evolved into more complex forms, animals – passing carbon they ingest from plants or plant eaters consumed – deposited more carbon into “sinks” as their bodies and waste were incorporated into the Earth’s crust. These accumulations of life forms, whether sinking to the bottom of the sea or dissolving into the crust of land over time, were gradually transformed into rich, black strata: oil and coal.

For a long, long time this was true. Life followed five principles of self-regulation:

§ Use of a non-polluting, unlimited energy source;
§ Recycling of matter through food webs;
§ Preservation of biodiversity in genes, kinds of creatures, habitats;
§ Fine control of populations to stay within carrying capacity;
§ Change in response to new conditions (evolution).

Then came the conscious being, the human, whose brain began to question how things worked, and whose ingenuity mimicked nature. A certain kind of wisdom grew as men and women observed nature’s ways and lived accordingly.

Things began to happen in one or two places in the world as man’s knowledge grew. Man wondered if oil or coal was combusted could it help us get things done. And as the pundits say, the rest is history.

A relatively small percent of the total human population has been putting that store of carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide emissions, and the Earth’s biosphere is heating up.
For readers who understand this basic imbalance and its consequences, it is very frustrating to live beside so many fellow countrymen and women seemingly unconcerned. Recently a woman I met stated that the warming of the Earth’s surface was “going to happen anyway, and besides, man as a species is not going to be here forever.”

Isn’t that like saying, “Well I am going to die anyway so why not kill myself now?”
Statements like that tell me how little people grasp the essential reality of life: we are not here alone, nor did we arrive here alone, but we evolved in tandem with thousands of species whose lives are intricately connected to ours and that make it possible for us to have life and to have it abundantly.

Americans in particular have never been more disconnected from their biological inheritance. We talk about “nature” in the abstract even as millions of microbes cleanse our skin, digest our food, and destroy harmful invaders. And this is happening in our very own bodies! Microbes can’t “get no respect!”

We are not bad people but we are ignorant of how life works and how we are a part of it. That knowledge, once the inheritance of every young child growing up in communities across the Earth, has been lost in modern technological cultures - lost to our peril.

So, what can thoughtful people do?

On a personal level we can contemplate those five principles of ecosystems and use them as a checklist for our own lives. How can we use less of a polluting type of energy, recycle more, leave a smaller footprint, create habitat in our yards, join conservation efforts, and change our ways to meet the new challenges? Call it a program of self-regulation.

Some might challenge that suggestion asking why they should give up their comforts, or restrict their activities, when no one else seems to be doing so. That reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s quest to find an ethical basis for living.

Here is what he thought:
As I sit here under this tree I think about how much I value my own life and wish to go on living and to have more of it. Then I look at this lofty tree with its gently swaying leaves and think, this tree must hold its own life as valuable and also want to go on living and have more of life, too. And even though it is mute, it nevertheless is no different than me in its desire to live, to grow, to flourish.

Everywhere we see this, if we stop to observe…the force of life willing itself into being and to survive upon the face of the Earth for its time. The fleeing gazelle with the swift cheetah in pursuit, the child fighting for her life in the cancer ward, bees pollinating the flowering beings that bring so much pleasure and food to humans…all to make the honey to survive, to thrive.

Recognizing this common bond to all of life around us, Schweitzer wrote, results in Reverence for Life, which he concluded is the ethical basis for living. We begin to value our own life more, to see it as a precious gift and to live it to its highest purpose. We regain the will to live.

This brings us full circle to Lovelock’s premise that the Earth itself is a living organism of which we are all functional parts. All together the whole thing works. Works, that is, as long as we follow the five basic principles that are the great roots of life on this planet.

Perhaps this time in human history is a call to return to a higher purpose in life, to realize the human’s role to consciously participate in the well-functioning of Earth’s living systems.

We are being reminded of our place in the whole pageant of life we find around us. We are called to Reverence for Life as a way of life. As individuals we can find emotional, spiritual, and practical guidance from the life we observe around us. Reconnecting, experiencing life in all its manifest forms as fellow inhabitants with which we share this beautiful planet – this life - is a way forward in an uncertain future.

References
Lovelock, James (1995). The Ages of Gaia, A Biography of Our Living Planet, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Schweitzer, Albert (1990). Out of My Life and Thought, An Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt & Co.