Is Gaia Dying ???

Here is a lengthy interview with James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/18/james-lovelock-the-biosphere-and-i-are-both-in-the-last-1-per-cent-of-our-lives

Here are some selected quotes (in italics), followed by my comments:

1. I’m not a scientist really. I’m an inventor or a mechanic.

Lately I have felt it's a bad idea to let scientists tell us how to run the world. Engineers have a better perspective for that.

2. I would say the biosphere and I are both in the last 1% of our lives.

If this is true we're running out of time to save ourselves, if such a thing is possible.

3. I always find it fascinating how the statistics illustrate that the health of the nation was enormously better at the end of the second world war than it was at the beginning.

Does that mean we should have another world war? Perish the thought.

4. I have felt for some time that the universities are getting dangerously like the early church. They have dozens of different sects and they are quite proud if you belong to one of them: if you are a chemist you often don’t know anything about biology and so on. This is why ordinary university science is not really helpful because the department looking at seaweed would not be the same as the one looking at methyl iodide. It is a division into bits. It’s time universities were revolutionised and had much more common thinking.

Boy, is he right on that one! Universities are destroying human thought, not encouraging it.

5. I always advocated nuclear as a good and cheap and sensible way of getting energy especially now that thorium is available as a fuel. But too many people hate it.

I don't hate nuclear power, but I do know from experience that the risks are far greater than most people realize. Can you say Chernobyl or Fukushima?

6. Humans are evolving rapidly. We have changed from a tribal animal into a city animal. Look at most insects and they have trod that path already.

Yes, we're turning into insects. Is that a good thing? Once we're fully integrated into an AI controlled hive, all living things (including us) will be easier to manipulate. But if the AI has the power of life and death, what do you think it will do to us? I suspect it will push us into a much smaller role in the overall scheme of things. Something tells me Lovelock would be pleased with that sort of outcome.