This book has left me feeling terrified and hopeless. It is a good book though and I've learnt alot from it, how every aspect of the planet affects each other and works together. And how people are over paranoid about certain things yet do nothing really about climate change. That like during war, people accept hardship and rationing, that we could pull together and do something, and yet we don't, we won't really believe we need to until something catastrophic happens. By which time it may be too late if it's not already.
I now understand that we need to use nuclear power and stop using fossil fuel asap. Nuclear is less wasteful, more efficient, less harmful to the planet. Renewable energy isn't advanced enough for our needs yet and we need nuclear until it is. We are paranoid about nuclear for the wrong reasons, it is dangerous but we don't mind many more dangerous things.Lovelock uses a village near a dam in China and a village near Chernobyl as an example. About 75 people died as a result of Chernobyl. If the dam burst, millions would die.
I've been feeling like what can I do, I can't persuade people to accept nuclear energy, I can't get nuclear power stations built. I can't change peoples opinions and behaviour. Other folks like James Lovelock are trying and not really succeeding. Yeah he got me, but I aint doing anything. And I almost didn't read the book because it had gaia in the title and I thought it was some hippy book. I read it because it was borrowed to me. People who don't already care about the environment probably won't read it. Then again, like Lovelock says, fiction gets through to people. Maybe design too. Maybe I can do something... Bah. So much to think about :( I don't want to preach to people or anything. And there's so much I don't understand.
