James Lovelock Meet the Author

Now it's time for meet the author. 35 years ago, James Lovelock came up

with the guy a theory, the idea that life once a bolt on earth and

consciously manipulate the planet in ways to make sure that life itself

continues to flourish. The earth, in other words, is a self`regulating

system. It's an idea he has revisited many times over the years.

Now, at the age of 94, he has published a memoir, part the series

of reflections on the impact man has had on that self`regulating system

and on what the future may hold. You've called this book a Ross Ride

To The Future. For mankind could be a difficult future. Quite a lot of

us may not make the journey. Yes, I think it's a great mistake to think

we are the end product of evolution. I think this is ridiculous. We are

just a step on the way station. Part of the problem you observe now if

there are simply too many of us. I think so. What can we do about that?

I don't think we can do too much about it, it will level off of its

own accord. A lot of thinkers, people like Fred Pearce, have

suggested that once women get their freedom around the world, the rate

of population increase will rapidly level of. They don't want to spend

their lives as baby factories. They would rather get on with things, as

well as reproducing. As you say, we are not, in your view, the end point

of evolution, we are mainly `` merely a stage in the evolution of

the Earth. One of the fascinations of this book is you look a very long

way into the future in parts of it. You suggest the ways in which we

might evolve. One of the things you suggest might happen is the

development of a life form that is a sort of Saint biosis between us and

our machines. Yes, a great friend and colleague of mine was Lynne

Margulis, an American biologist. She introduced the concept of endo Saint

biosis. This was the coming together of two individual living cells to

form a unit that, instead of chewing at each other and fighting to the

death, formed a union that was better than either of them alone. It

was through that union that things really started moving in evolution.

Before that, we'd spend 2 billion years just as free swimming cells,

not going any further. It gets more and more exciting as it goes on. I

fear now that animals like me, taking on electronic beats, it may

be another future kind of life. Incorporating them in ourselves, so

that we have a joint life. We supplied the power that keeps them

going that they can do their jobs and thinking with. That's something

for the very distant future. A lot of this book is about the nearer

future. Particularly, what we should do to counter global warming. You

are not by any means a sceptic about global warming, but you do admit

that you and other scientists may have been wrong in the projections

you made for what would happen over 20, 50, 100 years, because, you say,

we are too reliant on mathematical models. That is true. Not only that,

it's very difficult for the average scientist nowadays employed by a

government Department, University or big corporation to ever admit that

they were wrong. You are not allowed to make mistakes. I think it's

absolutely vital to make mistakes, because only then can you really see

the way ahead and see what you've done wrong. You have been a lone

scientist almost your entire career. You've worked on occasion

for NASA, in medical research, organisations like Shell, but mainly

you work for yourself. That gives you a freedom but it also means you

have to fight to be taken seriously. Not really. Can I take you up on the

word you used there? I don't think I've ever had a career. To me,

science was a vocation. I see a scientist as somebody like an

artist, who does it as a vocation. If you told most good artists that

they were in a career, they would want to spit! But most scientists

would want to spit if you like and what they did to the lives of an

artist, they think of themselves as rational. They are too rational.

They don't use their intuition enough. Artists use their intuition.

Then other people explain what they've done afterwards. New, as an

inventor, also used your intuition to try and come up with some

suggestions for dealing with this issue of global warming. One is we

are all moving into cities anyway. We should do more of that, we should

make more of cities. You liken them to ants nests or bee hives, that we

could be developing almost into a super species that evolves through

communities rather than as individuals. It was the great

American biologist, Wilson, that first suggested it. I'm riding on

his card, so to speak. When you think about it, the insect

communities went into nest living about 100 million years ago. They've

been doing it ever since and seem to like it. They think it's a very fine

and stable way of doing things. I think we can follow their example

very well. In fact, we are doing it. And you point to one particular

city, Singapore, as an example of how we might adapt to global

warming. As you point out, the climate of Singapore is not by any

means ideal, and yet the place flourishes. Not only is it not

ideal, it's more than twice as hot, their annual average temperature, as

the worst case of the IPCC predictions for future climates of

the world. If twice as hot is not that bad, perhaps we've been

worrying too much about the world heating up and not enough about

ourselves heating up. The Singaporeans have excellent air

conditioning. One of the things about Singapore is it is not

democracy. It looks like one but is really a non`democratic state. You

suggest that might be the model we have to adopt in future. A lot of

people will find that chilling. I'm sure they would. But this is the

wrong way to look at it. If you consider Britain and the United

States, for example, during World War II, we had to give up democracy

during that period. It was done with the consent for the duration. I

think that global warming is just as serious as a major war. We should be

prepared to give up democracy if necessary for the duration. James

Lovelock, thank you very much indeed.

Now it's time for the weather forecast. This should