Gaia's Sphere

"Gaian adj 1: self-sustaining 2: smoothly functioning, dependable 3: powerful, worthy of respect 4: slang: very impressive."*

It is well known that life on Earth adapts to its environment. Evolution would have it no other way. The Gaia hypothesis, however, suggests that life also alters its environment in order to maintain the right conditions for its own survival. Initially controversial, this hypothesis, as formulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, now provides a compelling and persuasive scientific statement of the interconnectedness of all the strands of the wonderful web of life that spans the entire living Earth.

This Earth is kept habitable by the action of the living organisms on it. The atmosphere, for instance, has not become toxic to animals (like that on Venus) because its supplies of oxygen are constantly replenished by plants, especially trees, which soak up carbon dioxide. Similarly, the oceans do not become toxic to aquatic creatures by being saturated with the salt and sulphur land erosion dumps into them because certain algæ filter out chemicals and emit them into the air. Every life form within Nature is, in a variety of ways, one component of the vast, self-regulating system that is the biosphere. Every life form on the planet, then, cooperates with the Earth herself to maintain the balance and harmony necessary to sustain both. Via a range of complex feedback mechanisms which counteract potentially harmful changes in the environment, the Earth and all her living children survive in an intimate, interactive, interdependent relationship. In short, the biosphere behaves as if it were a single organism, a single living creature, a being that Lovelock (on the advice of the writer William Golding) named Gaia, after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth.

For nearly four billion years, the planet's life force has modified the natural environment to maintain the equilibrium of the habitats that support a great diversity of living beings. Now, one species of primate latterly arrived on the scene is intervening in these processes in uncontrolled ways (by deforesting, emitting greenhouse gases, polluting), thereby jeopardising the entire ecosystem. Gaia prefers the planet should live. Is it not time to work with her rather than against her? Is it not time to return the disconnected human soul to the salvation of a life lived in harmony with mother Nature?

The Earth is Gaia's Sphere, a model of sacred wholeness. We - and all our non-human relations - are no less than her children, the children of a quite wonderful living planet.

*Barlow (1997). See the resources page for full details of all sources.

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