James Lovelock’s Novacene
Reviewing the last book from the Contrarian Centenarian
James Lovelock CBE was an independent scientist who worked in cryonics, on behalf of NASA missions, invented the electron capture detector which later showed the presence of ozone layer depleting CFCs and is most famously known for his Gaia theory.
Gaia theory was coined by the novelist William Golding, seeing the Greek Goddess of the Earth as a suitable namesake for Lovelock’s ideas regarding our planet being a self-regulating organism. He died last July at the ripe old age of 103 years. He lived in the same Dorset village as my Dad and would pass by, walking the Jurassic Coast until his final months. Novacene, from 2019 would be his last book.
Here he makes clear that life is very unlikely, given the timescales and possibilities for evolution; namely hosting all the necessary building blocks and sitting within a suitable “Goldilocks Zone”. As such the earth is uniquely precious in his view and human intelligence especially rare. The foreword from the co-writer suggests Lovelock isn’t anthropocentric but here and later in the book he does come across that way.
As such James believed that human extinction would be a bad thing on a cosmological scale. We are also warned against New atheism and the rationality of cause and effect as he calls for a more feminine sense of intuition. Nonetheless I would still suggest that most ideas can be traced to a deterministic view of the universe; the making of mistakes (he cites the idea of planet Vulcan) or faulty logic doesn’t really counteract this.
Photosynthesis provides the first solar revolution and he believes Newcomen’s engine to provide the second and thereby the birth of The Anthropocene: namely the age of the human. It allowed us to access vast quantities of solar energy as coal and other fossil fuels. The Novacene will be the third stage as solar energy is utilised in order to provide an age of cyborgs and rapid growth in information transference.
Soon after the Anthropocene's start follows 300 years of foot to the accelerator, boy racers one and all. Critics such as William Wordsworth railed (excuse the pun) against the proliferation of trains in his poetry.
There was no turning back. A seabird took 50 billion years to evolve but ever quicker airplanes popped up in a flash. Moore’s Law suggested a doubling of processing power every year and has largely been proven correct.
The ever increasing march of industrialised warfare is an undesirable symptom in his view. The nuclear bomb and its testing being particularly significant in its enduring radiation and possible body counts. A huge leap beyond the hand held weapons of the past.
Lovelock is of course a proponent of nuclear energy, thus risking the ire of many greens, so he bemoans the negative links with its use in weaponry. Its impacts are nothing compared to the usage of fossil fuels and what greenhouse gases will bring to pass though.
Perhaps cities exemplify the Anthropocene more than any other factor, holding as they do heaving millions of humans, all living in close quarters. Rather than environmental disaster zones Lovelock sees them as a more efficient usage of fossil fuels. Visible from space with their immense light pollution they show we are ready for the next stage of evolution in his view.
Rather than seeing the Anthropocene as uniquely harmful Lovelock takes a nuanced stance suggesting there is still beauty to be found in this epoch. That we have warmed the planet is preferable to glaciers; Gaia is trying to keep cool but life doesn’t tend to thrive in an ice age.
Of vital importance to Lovelock is keeping Gaia in decent shape so that rogue asteroid or volcanic events don’t finish it off. Temperatures are becoming so hot in certain parts of the world; that we cannot survive. Our climate could pass tipping points and end up with an atmosphere akin to Venus. A hot, dead planet.
Much of the Anthropocene is obviously negative; the aforementioned climate change, species extinction, industrial warfare etc. Lovelock correctly attributes this to human numbers. When Newcomen created his steam engine there were 700 million of us, there are now in excess of eight billion. A more than tenfold increase. We no longer have the living room and resources to support ourselves as hunter gatherers and are predicted to reach 10–11 billion by current trends.
Optimists like Mark Lynas however, suggest we could have a Good Anthropocene. Clive Hamilton treats this as a false religion that urges us to suffer now in the hopes of a better future. The eco-modernist God is progress. Lovelock suggests there is no golden age to return to and that suffering has always been plentiful, which is hard to dispute.
So Lovelock’s defence of progress is in opposition to the criticisms of his good friend the philosopher John Gray. The anthropocene is a natural occurrence, humans being a product of evolution. We are another part of the living Gaia system for all the drawbacks of destroying wider ecosystems. He bemoans the green criticism of plastics and extolls the many uses.
He is unequivocal on the harms of fossil fuels and the benefits of rewilding but solar and wind power are a poor substitutes for nuclear fission. Ever the contrarian this brings him into conflict with many on the green left.
James is delighted by the information age of the coming Novacene. Matter is transformed into data. He cites the Chess and Go machines that bettered the best human players. They used a combination of human input with self teaching. Deep Mind taught itself without any human input, using instead some amount of intuition.
Copper wires can be a million times faster than a neural connection so we can begin to look very feeble in our comparative capabilities. Future AI systems might view us akin to something like a plant. These cyborgs benefit from Moore’s law and can advance quickly. Our roles might be as the midwives to this new state of “life.”
The consciousness of the Novacene will require us to keep the Earth habitable and will likely work alongside us to that aim for a time before we eventually become obsolete. It may need new conditions to thrive in and eventually leave the planet.
He then considers the challenges of living alongside robotic intelligences, the uncanny eerie feeling they instill in us for example. Will they deem us worthy of treating with compassion? Perhaps they will treat us as we treat other animals, a tale of exploitation and bloodshed.
I share Lovelock’s curiosity for knowledge but can’t claim to feel his excitement over the Anthropocene, the Novacene or the proliferation of knowledge for perpetuity. I would take a more philosophical position and prioritise the reduction of suffering for sentient beings. Say what you will though, James Lovelock always provided food for thought and this book is no exception.
