British Scientist Lovelock Says it's Too Late To Reverse Global Warming

AEN News

London - James Lovelock, 81, a Fellow of the Royal Society and honorary visiting professor at Oxford University, says it is too late for the world to turn around the damage that's been done to Earth's climate and warned the leading nations to prepare for what he called "living hell" as the earth's climate continues to grow warmer.

Lovelock was responsible for the discovery of the global distribution of nitrous oxide and of the chlorofluorocarbons, both of which are important in the stratospheric chemistry of ozone. If a lesser scientist made such a prediction they'd be ridiculed. But Lovelock, now 81, has received a slew of environmental and scientific awards and honours in the US, Europe and Japan.

Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people who survive will be in the Arctic where the climate will be tolerable, Lovelock maintains. According to Lovelock, the world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is unlikely to survive.

The theory holds that the planet has a special way of regulating itself, chemically and atmospherically, of keeping itself fit for life, as if it were a great superorganism; as if, in fact, it were alive. Lovelock, who conceived the idea in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began to surface nearly 20 years ago.

Now his concerns have reached a peak and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments around the world to begin large-scale preparations for surviving.

"I think we have little option now but to prepare for the worst," Lovelock recently told western governments, "and assume that we have passed the threshold. We will do our best to survive but sadly I cannot see the US or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions."