In today's climate warming has threatened human life, how should human beings and nature, and the earth achieve peaceful coexistence? Since the Gaia hypothesis was proposed, more and more evidence has shown that life plays an important role in maintaining the stability and suitability of the Earth's ecosystems.
In the 1960s and 1970s, inventor and chemist Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the biosphere and environment on the Earth's surface constitute a self-regulating evolutionary system. In contrast to Darwinism, Lovelock believed that life, in addition to adaptation, also has the ability to adjust its environment.
Gaia's hypothesis has been widely discussed in the scientific community since it was proposed. Some scientists believe that the Gaia hypothesis provides a new perspective on the complexity and stability of the Earth's ecosystems, but some scientists have questioned the science and operability of the Gaia hypothesis, especially the question of how the Earth metabolizes and reproduces as a whole, which is still a focus of debate in the scientific community.
In Confronting Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climate Regime, French philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist Bruno Latour uses the concept of this hypothesis to explain the decisive role of climate in the development of global history, and how humans should live peacefully with nature and the earth now that climate warming has threatened human life.
Profound changes in our relationship with the world
I can't stop it. It's over and over again. One day the water rose; Another day is soil erosion; At night, the ice melts faster; In between two war crimes, the 20 o 'clock news tells us that thousands of species will become extinct before they are even recorded; Monthly measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide are worse than the unemployment rate;
We know that every year since the observatory was established, the temperature has reached a new high; Sea levels continue to rise; Coastlines are increasingly threatened by spring storms; Each survey showed increased ocean acidification. This is how the media say we are living in an era of "ecological crisis".
Alas, talking about a "crisis" is just another way of comforting yourself by telling yourself that "this too shall pass." The crisis "will pass soon" if only it were a crisis! If only it had been a crisis! According to experts, we should be talking about "mutations" : we used to live in one world; We move on again, mutating into another world. Too often we use the adjective "ecological" to comfort ourselves from the troubles and conflicts that threaten us: "Ah, if you're talking about ecology, it's not our business."
As we did in the 20th century when we talked about "the environment," the environment represented the life of nature seen far away from us, under the shelter of a windowsill. But experts now believe that it is all of us, all of us in the depths of our precious, tiny existence, who will be affected.
This information directly reminds us how to eat and drink, how to use the land, how to travel, how to dress. Normally, in the midst of a barrage of bad news, we should have felt it slip from a simple ecological crisis to what should be called a profound change in our relationship with the world.
However, this is not the case. The evidence is that we are hearing the news with a surprising calmness, and even with an admirable reticence... If this were a radical change, the very basis of our existence would have changed by now. We should already be changing what we eat, where we live, how we travel, how we farm, and in general, how we produce. Every time the sirens stop, we rush out of the shadows and invent new technologies to deal with the threat.
The people of rich countries will also be as creative as they were in previous wars, as they were in the 20th century, and they should have solved the problem within four or five years with massive lifestyle changes. Thanks to their activism, the amount of carbon dioxide captured by the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has only begun to stabilize; The moist soil is crawling with earthworms, and the planktonic waters are once again filled with fish; Even the loss of Arctic ice is slowing (unless the ice has reached a point of no return and takes on a new state in the millennium).
In any case, after nearly three decades, we should have acted sooner. The crisis should be over. We can look back on the "Great Ecological War" era with pride, because we almost gave in, but turned the tide by reacting quickly and mobilizing all our inventive abilities.
Perhaps we will take our grandchildren to museums commemorating the struggle, hoping they will marvel at our progress, just as we now marvel at how the second World War led to the Manhattan Project, the perfection of penicillin, or the rapid development of radar or air transport. But just like that, what was supposed to be a temporary crisis has morphed into a profound change in our relationship with the world. It seems we have become the ones who should have taken action 30 or 40 years ago - but have done nothing, or very little.
It is so strange that we have crossed a series of thresholds, experienced a total war, and found almost nothing! We are bent over by the weight of the event, but we never really perceive it, and we never do anything to resist it. Consider this: behind the mass of world wars, colonial wars, and nuclear threats, there was another war in the 20th century - the "century of classic wars" - that was also global, comprehensive, colonial, and that we experienced but did not feel.
While we are loosely prepared to care about the fate of "future generations" (as it was said not long ago), everything has already been committed by past generations! Something has already happened, and it will not be a coming threat in front of us, but behind those who have already been born. How can we not be deeply ashamed that when the alarm goes off, we proceed like sleepwalkers, eventually making the situation irreparable?
The alarm did not go away, however. The siren neighed all the way. Awareness of ecological disaster is old, alive, and well documented. It began at the very beginning of what we call the "industrial Age," or "mechanical civilization." We can't claim to know nothing about it. There are just so many ways to know and ignore at the same time.
Often, when it comes to our own survival and the well-being of those close to us, we tend to play it safe: we go to the pediatrician for our children's chills; For a small threat on the plantation, we must also prepare a war against insects; For a little property concerns, we also have to buy insurance, equipped with surveillance cameras; The army immediately massed on the border in anticipation of an invasion. Even when people aren't sure about the diagnosis, and even when experts continue to argue about the dangers, we apply the infamous precautionary principle when it comes to protecting our loved ones and possessions.
But in this world crisis, no one will act courageously along these lines. This time, the very old human nature remained numb - a human nature that is cautious and critical, and often can only feel its way forward, like a blind man who strikes every obstacle with a sounding staff to adapt to any risk, flinches when he senses resistance, strides forward once the road is clear, and falters again when new obstacles appear. In this matter, no peasant, bourgeois, artisan, worker, or political virtue seems to come into play. The alarm went off, and one by one, it was cut off. We open our eyes, see, hear, know, close our eyes and move on!
If one reads Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers and is surprised that Europe rushed into the First World War in August 1914 despite knowing the reasons, how can one not be surprised that Europe (and all the other followers) - who, in retrospect, knew the causes and effects - rushed into the other great war? It is a war that we are dismayed to learn has begun and that we may have lost.
