James Lovelock: Gaïa: A New Look at Life on Earth

Focus on one of the founding works of modern ecology: the Gaia hypothesis, unveiled to the world by scientist James Lovelock at the end of the 1970’s.

In 1979, British scientist James E. Lovelock published Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, the first in a series of works in which he would tirelessly expose the discovery which was his life’s work: the Gaia hypothesis. His theory came as a shock to many scientists and to the public, and durably framed the ecological approach to environmental issues. Flashback on a book, and its author, that created a new way of looking at the world that we live in, and of how to interact with it.

From Mars to Gaia

James Lovelock warns his readers: “This book is about a search for life, and the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find the largest living creature on Earth.” He explains that this quest started while he was working, in the mid-sixties, as a consultant to a team in the Jet Propulsion Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology, whose goal was to “devise ways and means of detecting life on Mars”. This job led him to wonder what the real nature of life was, and how it could be recognized – and to discover that there was almost nothing in scientific literature which resembled “a comprehensive definition of life as a physical process, on which one could base the design of life-detection experiments”. This lack of understanding of life itself was an issue, given that a scientific process needed to be defined to evidence the presence of life on Mars, or lack thereof. Lovelock then thought of life detection by atmospheric analysis, which was especially pertinent since Mars has no oceans: if there was life there, it certainly had made use of the atmosphere to establish itself. Lovelock started to dig into how it all worked on Earth, and how the study of the atmosphere could lead to the scientific and unquestionable conclusion that there was indeed life on our planet. Conclusion: “the only feasible explanation of the Earth’s highly improbable atmosphere was that it was being manipulated on a day-to-day basis from the surface, and that the manipulator was life itself.” In other words, that life was maintaining the conditions of its own subsistence by manipulating and regulating the atmosphere. Lovelock’s mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories then ended, but the idea had taken root deep inside his mind – where it had first been planted by the conquest of space!

Read More

When plastic becomes part of Nature’s recycling system

Plastic is widely acknowledged as an environmental plague, but replacement solutions are hard to find and it seems that we would never be able to live without it. But what if a revolutionary decision was taken at the 2032 Earth Summit?

2032. The Rio + 40 Earth Summit which has just ended was the scene of a surprising, courageous and visionary decision: to “eradicate all non-biodegradable and polluting plastics within the next 20 years”. A bold statement that immediately drew criticism from representatives of the petrochemical and plastic industries and oil-producing countries, who argued in a joint statement that a world without plastic was “inconceivable and simply impossible to attain”, and that this “utopia (would) soon die by itself”. However, with the exception of OPEC member countries and the United States, every country represented at the Earth Summit co-signed the declaration and committed to achieving quantifiable goals. An ad hoc international organizationis expected to be created within the next few months. A world without plastic seems to be dawning. Flash-back on how the need to eradicate plastic has become an imperative over the past 50 years, and how new solutions to replace it were found.

Why plastic must disappear

The decision to eradicate “traditional” plastic was fervently supported by the main global powers, led by China, India and Brazil, who chose at the turn of the 2020s to encourage the transition towards a world without petroleum. Even Brazil, then an oil exporter, decided to forego this activity and focus on more sustainable energies. At the time, Chinese president Xi Jinping declared: “If we, the nations still known in the Western world as “emerging countries”, want to maintain the economic leadership position we have established, we must free ourselves from dependency on oil and fossil resources as soon as possible.” Awareness was then growing over the catastrophe that plastic had become for the environment. The discovery of the Great Garbage Patch in the 1990s was the first and most visible sign of how it had invaded every part of nature: this Patch of plastic waste that floated in the North Pacific, between California and Japan, amounted to 3.5 million tons of garbage in 2012. The effects on biodiversity and wildlife were dramatic: countless birds found dead with their stomachs full of plastic, tortoises that mistook plastic bags for jellyfish and suffocated on them, fish killed by the tiny particles of plastic they ingested, etc. According to the NGO Oceana, in 2010, 675 tons of waste were thrown into the sea each hour!

Read More

“Living longer, but living better” says Danone Nutricia GM’s for Healthy Aging

Michel Albrecht is General Manager for Healthy Aging partnership at Danone Nutricia France. Here is his tribune on healthy aging:

“The world population is aging. In 2050, half of it will be over 50. And in Europe, ten in a hundred people will be octogenarians. At present, age too often goes hand in hand with loss of independence. This fact constitutes a huge issue for European societies, particularly in its impact on public finances. Hence the urgent need to think up innovative solutions to prolong the period of autonomy: we are living longer, and we need to be able to live better.

As Daniel Carasso recommends, “Go on dreaming while keeping your feet firmly on the ground!” In 2011, Nutricia France set up a partnership with the Siel Bleu association, in order to design a program for maintaining or regaining independence. This is in direct line with the European Healthy Ageing program launched in early 2011, which aims to enable elderly people in Europe to gain two years of independence by 2020. Through its subsidiary Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition, Danone is the only private company to become a partner of this program, where it represents the food sector.

Read More

Adaptation to Climate Change by Christian de Perthuis

Read More

Obesity is the new hunger

In developing countries, hunger is no longer a synonym of starvation or undernutrition, and obesity is a growing sign that populations experience « hidden hunger ». How is obesity linked to malnutrition, and will it invade the world?

For the French romantics, melancholy and boredom constituted the « mal du siècle », the malady of the 19^th century. In 2012, « mal du siècle » is the expression that first comes to mind when thinking of… obesity. Obesity is a plague that has been spreading in post-industrialized societies and is now reaching developing countries. Within the last 30 years, the average weight of American citizens has gained 10 kilos, and obesity throughout the world has doubled. A tendency that does not say too much good about the future. In 2030, there could be 3,3 billion obese people. 80 % of which would live in the developing world.

Read More

Fungi discovered in the Amazon will eat your plastic

Polyurethane seemed like it couldn’t interact with the earth’s normal processes of breaking down and recycling material. That’s just because it hadn’t met the right mushroom yet.

The fungi, Pestalotiopsis microspora, is the first anyone has found to survive on a steady diet of polyurethane alone and—even more surprising—do this in an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment that is close to the condition at the bottom of a landfill.

Student Pria Anand recorded the microbe’s remarkable behavior and Jonathan Russell isolated the enzymes that allow the organism to degrade plastic as its food source. The Yale team published their findings in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology late last year concluding the microbe is “a promising source of biodiversity from which to screen for metabolic properties useful for bioremediation.”

Read more on co.Exist

After Durban: Which carbon markets for what development? By Bernard Giraud, President of the Livelihoods Venture

Following the spectacular failure at Copenhagen and the stalemate at Cancun, catastrophe was narrowly avoided at the Durban climate conference when negotiators from 190 states managed with great difficulty - and at the last minute - to settle on an agreement. Its content was immediately subjected to criticism: it contains no quantified commitment nor constraints, and its schedule will lead the planet towards a temperature increase well above 2°C, with well-known consequences for the most exposed and at-risk populations.

Read More

Après 2050 l’espèce humaine s'éteindra

Les 4 procureurs à la Gaîté Lyrique pour le Tribunal pour les générations futures sur le thème de la surpopulation.

Ci-dessus, les 4 procureurs : Gilles Pison, Didier Barthès, Théophile de Giraud et Thierry Keller. En lien, le résumé du Tribunal fait par OWNI.fr.