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James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of
Humanity

Article  in  Critical Criminology · March 2008

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James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate

Michael J. Lynch

Published online: 13 December 2007

Tell the truth: when you read the title of the book being examined in this reviewed you
wondered why it was published in a criminology journal. Maybe you were curious about
who or what Gaia might be, or perhaps you recognized the name Gaia from Greek
Mythology as the mother of the Earth and wondered what implications this had for the
study of crime and justice. If you read the subtitle of the book, you wondered why this
review was relevant to criminology. My assumption is that the majority of readers will be
wondering about the relevance of this review, and thus my first task in this review is to
demonstrate its relevance.
As the subtitle suggests, this book examines the ‘‘fate of humanity,’’ which in itself is no
small topic, and an issue that seems far removed from criminology. It could easily be
argued, however, that any book about the fate of humanity has relevance to the social
sciences, including criminology, since the work of social scientists is about understanding
and identifying the workings of social relationships which involve theories on human
relationships, human nature, human social organizations, or the stuff that comprises the
essential ideas of humanity. I will return to why this book is important to criminology in
particular shortly. Before doing so, however, it is useful to introduce a few more general
comments about the book’s author and its subject matter.
James Lovelock is an internationally recognized scientist, and one of the most promi-
nent figures in the international environmental sciences arena. In his long career, he has
published over 200 scientific papers, primarily in the area of environmental theory and
earth sciences. He is also widely recognized for proposing the Gaia Hypothesis, and is
responsible for transforming that hypothesis into Gaia Theory—a complex description of
the earth as a living organism.
Lovelock’s book describes the current state of the world’s environment, the extent and
impact of global warming on the earth and its inhabitants, and the interrelationship
between these conditions and the fate of humanity or the survival of the human race on a
planet moving toward a new state of ecological equilibrium. This topic is of immense
importance because it probes how the process of global warming will establish ecological

M. J. Lynch (&)
Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620-8100, USA
e-mail: radcrim@tampabay.rr.com

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76 M. J. Lynch

and climate conditions that threaten human existence. This is no minor concern, and the
implications of this work are far reaching, spanning the scope of academic disciplines.
Indeed, one could argue that Lovelock’s message is of such great importance that it should
become a central issue and concern in the life of all academic disciplines. Lovelock’s
argument not only has implications for the future of human societies, but also for the need
to revise the manner in which academic disciplines are organized, and the subject matters
that are of academic importance.
None of these observations, however, answers the more immediate question: what are the
criminological implications of global warming? Before reviewing the content of Lovelock’s
work, I briefly review several relevant implications of this work for criminology.
Social Justice The process of global warming has a number of social justice implica-
tions. First, consider the evidence of global warming’s effects which have already come to
pass. Many of these effects have had their greatest impact on peoples who are economi-
cally poor, especially on those living within cultural circumstances that have the least
impact on the progress or the process of global warming. For example, those living on
remote islands such as Vanuata in the Pacific, have been evacuated in response to climate
and ecological changes induced by global warming. Similar effects have been noted in two
Alaskan costal villages, Kivalina and Shaktoolik, which have experienced severe costal
erosion. In Bangladesh, increased water flow in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna
rivers from the melting of the Himalayan glaciers threatened the lifestyles of millions of
the area’s residents. The ability of these peoples to maintain their subsistence life styles are
threatened by the advance of global warming as the natural habitats on which they depend
are transformed.
The urban poor and elderly are also at risk, faced with the difficulties posed by rising
temperatures and heat waves. In the summer of 2003, for instance, a European heat waved
caused an estimated 35,000 deaths. That same summer, it was estimated the heat wave
contributed to more than 2,100 premature deaths in the U.K., and that the European total
may have been closer to 50,000 premature deaths (Kosatsky 2005). Lacking the resources
to survive extensive, long term temperature increases (e.g., air conditioning), both the
urban and rural poor are among the first to experience the catastrophic effects of global
warming.
Legal Issues There are emerging efforts to deal with global warming at the international,
national and local levels which depend on legal efforts. These efforts present a number of
potential quandaries. At the international level, these problems revolve around efforts to
ratify and enforce treaties. But, there are also national level issues as well. What kinds of
regulations will nations create? Should they rely on regulatory or criminal frameworks?
How will these regulations be enforced? Will this require the creation of new forms of
social control and policing?
Many current legal reforms related to global warming are voluntary. Given the exten-
sive nature of the problem, will voluntary legal responses be sufficient? Is there a need for
forced compliance?
In addition, there are a number of conflicts that have already emerged around global
warming regulations. In the US, some of these conflicts pit state governments against the
federal government, and are evident in the conflict between a number of current and former
state governors who have attempted to address global warming (e.g., governors from
California, Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Massa-
chusetts) and the G.W. Bush Administration. At another level, there are conflicts between
state governments and corporations over global warming regulations and the science of
global warming.

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Book Review 77

One of the issues that has yet to be fully explored is the role of the public in global
warming regulation. The science of global warming clearly spells out the interests of the
public in global warming regulation. These interests, however, have been undermined by
close ties between the G.W. Bush White House and industries that facilitate global
warming. Will these conflicts be resolved? If not, do they have the potential to threaten the
legitimacy of state governments that side with corporations? Could these conditions lead to
public challenges to state governments? Or even to the culture of consumption and pro-
duction that lays behind the progress of global warming? These are indeed weighty
questions to ponder, and questions that have extraordinarily obvious criminological
connections.
Criminal Justice Policy Criminologists need to come to grips with the problems pre-
sented by global warming because these problems contain significant crime policy
implications. How can criminal justice policies be reorganized to address the link between
energy consumption, global warming and crime control efforts? For instance, in the US,
policing is organized around the patrol vehicle, a mechanism that burns fossil fuels and
contributes to global warming. Police stations, jails and prisons burn fossil fuels as part of
their crime control mission. There is a need for criminologists to address how all aspects of
crime control—from the behaviors law focuses on, to ordinary and acceptable criminal
justice practices—can be reformed in the era of global warming. Such reforms, for
example, have clear implications for the US prisons system, the world’s largest (Lynch
2007).
Thus far, I have examined why global warming should be of concern to criminologists.
To be sure, these ideas may seem far-fetched, and many may not be sure that there is
sufficient evidence to support such a claim. Thus, before describing the contents of
Lovelock’s book, let me divert our attention to evidence of the scientific basis of global
warming.
Science and Global Warming In a recent study, Boykoff and Boykoff (2004) demon-
strated that the scientific consensus on global warming is misrepresented in the mass
media. In its effort to represent both sides of the story, Boykoff and Boykoff found that the
news media pays unwarranted attention to ‘‘evidence’’ challenging the scientific basis of
global warming. Such evidence, typically produced by conservative think tanks and in
forms other than in scientific journals, appeared in nearly 60% (52.7% of stories contained
mixed discussions and 6.2% criticized anthropogenic accounts of global warming) of news
media stories on global warming in the prestige media sources examined by these
researchers. But, there is little, if any, scientific disagreement concerning the current period
of global warming or its causes. In her study on the science of global warming published in
Science, Oreskes (2004), an historian of science, discovered little disagreement on the
causes and extent of global warming. Oreskes reviewed the content of 928 abstracts
published between 1993 and 2003 in referred scientific journals and failed to uncover
discover even one instance of scientific disagreement on the causes or existence of global
warming. It is from the perspective of this scientific consensus on global warming that
Lovelock writes his book.
On Lovelock’s Book To some or even most of the general public (and to the G.W. Bush
Administration which continues to take a hardline stance against the science of global
warming) the content and arguments that comprise Lovelock’s book will be startling.
Nevertheless, the book is, as far as I am concerned, accurate, wide ranging and compre-
hensive in its discussions of global warming.
Lovelock’s work draws extensively on the Gaia theory he has investigated for more than
three decades. This theory describes the earth as a living organism complete with its own

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system of self-regulation. This self-regulating system maintains the conditions for life on
the planet. The evidence of the effectiveness of this self-regulating system is drawn from
historical data related to temperature and concentrations of global warming gases at var-
ious phases of earth’s history.
In recent decades—and for more than a century—the earth’s self-regulating system has
been damaged by human activity. These activities include the expansion of industrial
forms of economic and social organization, the increased levels of global warming pol-
lution expelled under industrial relations, and the damage industrial society has done to the
self-regulating mechanism by harvesting forest and building urban and suburban
metropolises. Lovelock argues that the cumulative effect of human activity has, in the
contemporary period, produced a set of ecological conditions that have damaged the ability
of earth’s self-regulating mechanism to correct.
Lovelock is not shy about noting that extensive climate change is already underway. He
notes that these changes are so extensive that they cannot be altered by any set of new
policies humans introduce. The result, Lovelock argues, is that the earth is already moving
toward a new state of environmental equilibrium. This new state of equilibrium is now
inevitable, and even extensive and decisive human efforts to control global warming in the
present would not return the earth to its pre-global warming phase for as many as
100,000 years.
Despite this seemingly dramatic revelation, Lovelock believes that the earth is resilient,
and that it will manage to survive global warming. It will do so, however, by forcing into
existence a set of conditions that will present challenges to the ability of the species that
inhabit earth to survive. Indeed, Lovelock argues that most species will eventually dis-
appear. The extinction of life forms is one of the new self-regulating mechanisms the earth
produces to ensure its own future.
The challenges the earth’s new equilibrium presents to humans will be extensive. As
temperatures rise, rainforests will recede and become deserts, a process already underway.
Life forms will be forced to moved to the earth’s poles to locate temperatures conducive to
life. Competition over natural resources will intensify as species are concentrated in these
regions.
Lovelock also notes that the process of global warming will change the nature of human
civilization forever. The large metropolis will disappear. There will be a need for humans
to rediscover the kinds of subsistence lifestyles that supported human populations prior to
industrialization.
Scientists have established the conditions under which global warming will impact the
earth’s environment. For example, a 2.7°C will destabilize Greenland’s ice-shelf; a 4°C
rise will cause the failure of tropical rain forests; an atmospheric concentration of 500 parts
per million of carbon dioxide will cause algae life forms to fail. The world is inching
toward these levels of ecological damage.
Despite the gloom of this message, Lovelock holds out some hope that humans respond
appropriately and that the human species can survive global warming. To be sure, if it does
survive, it will survive in a new form.
For the uninitiated, the scenario Lovelock describes reads like a science fiction movie.
Nevertheless, one must remember that the science of global warming tells us we are living
out this science fiction thriller.
In light of this news, much of what criminologists do seems rather unimportant. What
causes crimes? How can crime be controlled? What theory of justice is most appropriate?
These questions pale in comparison to the question of the survival and fate of humanity.

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It is to these new circumstances that criminology must adapt, or be whisked away in the
extinction of species (Meyer 2006) brought about by global warming.

References

Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2004). Balance as bias: Global warming and the US Press. Global
Environmental Change, 14, 125–136.
Kosatsky, T. (2005). The 2003 European heat wave. Eurosurveillance, 10(7–9), 148–149.
Lynch, M. J. (2007). Big prisons, big dreams: Crime and the failure America’s prison system. Newark:
Rutgers University Press.
Meyer, S. M. (2006). The end of the wild. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Oreskes, N. (2004). Beyond the Ivory Tower: The scientific consensus on climate change. Science, 306,
5702:1686.

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