Nature's Evil

Armed with industrial technologies, we are now reverting from fossil fuel to the power of wind, water and the sun. This switch will be difficult. 2 Renewable energy will not be able to meet today’s agriculture and transport needs. A radical reduction in energy consumption is essential, but this requires billions of people to change their way of life. I am writing this in 2020, and it looks as if humankind, unable to accomplish this task, has outsourced it to the virus. We no longer travel and eat out, but our emissions are still unacceptably high. Switching to wind farms, solar panels and sophisticated batteries radically increases the need for old and new sorts of raw material, from sand to rare metals. The growth of renewable energy in the twenty-first century is slower than that of steam power in the nineteenth century. The fourth energy transition is achievable, but it will be a long-drawn-out and very difficult process. Buoyed up by enthusiasm, ‘green’ politicians underestimate these difficulties; scientists should share their knowledge with the public.

The Gaia hypothesis

About fifty years ago, the doctor and climatologist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis. 3 The earth is a living organism, made up of human beings and other organisms, as well as the oceans, the atmosphere and the earth’s crust. The living planet, named in honour of the ancient goddess Gaia, can adapt, develop and overcome difficulties. But, as with any other organism, Gaia’s potential for self-regulation has its limits. Some injuries heal, others may become malignant. Lovelock considers humankind as part of this process. When human beings destabilise Gaia, she will sacrifice them if that’s what it takes to keep the planet healthy. According to the ancient myth, Gaia was the wife of Uranos, and she incited their son, Kronos, to castrate his father. Splashes of semen scattered around the world, giving birth to the Titans. In the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence there is a famous portrayal of this act, painted by Giorgio Vasari. Gaia is guiding the arm of Kronos as he strikes the fatal blow against the creator of the universe.

Bruno Latour took Lovelock’s ideas even further. Latour makes mighty, horrifying Gaia a symbol of nature which rises up against humankind. The philosopher insists on Gaia’s singularity and physicality but rejects the anthropomorphic idea that she has a soul or a plan. Made up of people and nature, Gaia is a single entity encompassing contradictory elements. She is both nurturing mother and castrator. She used to be both alluring and scary, but nowadays she shows us only her terrible aspect. The catastrophe that threatens us on a global scale is not a war of all against all, of people against people, but a hybrid battle of many natural forces, including human ones, for their very existence. Such a battle cannot be stopped by local Leviathans, no matter how terrible they might be. Faced with global Gaia, these giants look like midgets. The new image of power is not male but female, not political but ecological, not national but universal – but, as before, it is sublime and terrifying. Monstrous Gaia, the mother of Time, is threatening the panic-stricken world with castration – this is the philosopher’s warning to our archaic era.

Latour makes frequent and critical references to Hobbes. 4 What he is seeking is a suitable replacement for Leviathan, and he finds it in the image of Gaia. Leviathan was the idea of coercive power in the mercantile state. Dramatic but calculating, this male monster stops the war of all against all, but only on the land he has already occupied. Hobbes lived in a century of war and revolution, and he knew that, while domestic peace was possible and highly desirable, the war of all against all – a state of nature – would endure between countries. His only hope was that the sovereign could call a halt to civil war on a self-contained island. Composed of the people, Leviathan can prevent violence only within himself – within the state – but he cannot solve global problems. In the world war with nature, every state has its own interest, which usually consists of continuing the war. No single state is capable of preventing climate catastrophe or a pandemic. This can only be achieved by a new monster, the size of the planet and female. She terrifies the sovereigns just as they terrify the individual members of their societies. Gaia is needed to end the battle of them all, sovereigns and their subjects, against nature.