Is the human race under threat of destruction?
This man thinks so and he has a plan for saving it
He’s a renowned scientist, inventor and most famously...
...he is the man who came up with a revolutionary new idea...
...of how the Earth works
This is James Lovelock...
...and he has just turned 100 years old
He believes artificial intelligence or so called “cyborgs”...
...could take control, cool the planet and allow the human species to survive
James Lovelock’s work has changed the way scientists look at everything...
...from the common cold, to life on Mars
He invented a device that detected ozone-damaging CFCs...
...in the atmosphere all around the world...
...a precursor to the detection of holes in the ozone layer
James Lovelock’s revolutionary insights about the Earth...
...behaving like a living being...
...a single, complex, self-regulating system...
...reframed the way environmentalists understand the Earth
He named the idea after the ancient greek goddess of Earth—Gaia
Gaia is the name given to the system of organisms...
...that live on the Earth and maintain its climate suitable for life
But James Lovelock’s Gaia is no kindly goddess...
...protecting humankind from itself
He argues that humans have pushed Gaia to its limit...
...and whilst the Earth will eventually rebalance itself...
...it may be too late for the human race
Unless humans start making drastic changes
Humans have many options...
...if they want to save themselves and the planet
This is his four-point plan to save humankind
By 2050, 140m people could be forced to migrate...
...within their countries because of climate change
But why wait?
James Lovelock believes land that will be made uninhabitable...
...should be abandoned now
Humans should retreat to efficient, safe, climate-controlled cities
Humans should go to megacities if they want to avoid...
...the worst dangers of climate change
Mainly because a city is a smaller unit to control...
...and regulate the composition of the atmosphere, the soil...
Rather similar to the nests of invertebrates of various kinds...
...ants, wasps, bees
Whereas the open space of the planet itself...
...is huge and not easy to handle
According to James Lovelock humans need to rethink...
...the way they power the world...
...ditching fossil fuels and switching not just to renewable...
...but to nuclear power
If we want to avoid damaging the planet by our way of life...
...do not burn fuel unnecessarily
We should be using nuclear power now as our main source of energy
Fears around nuclear energy...
...have been compounded by disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima
But for James Lovelock these fears remain misplaced
The extraordinary thing is it is the safest way of producing electricity
The death rate in the power stations that use nuclear...
...is way, way, way below that in any of the other forms...
...including renewables
Global warming may be the biggest threat facing humanity
Attempts to cut carbon emissions are too small to reduce CO   levels
James Lovelock thinks climate-controlling technology...
...called geoengineering could be the answer
I rather like Teller’s idea...
...the inventor of the hydrogen bomb...
...which is the sunshade
It’s the kind of mesh screen...
...that goes out into a heliocentric orbit around the sun...
...and shields the Earth from a few percent of the sun’s radiation
But there’s another way to build a sunshade—inside the Earth’s atmosphere
In 1991 a volcanic eruption in the Philippines...
...had a profound effect on the world
The gas cloud it produced reached the stratosphere...
...cooling the world by as much as 0.5°C for four years
The simplest thing is really to mimic volcanoes...
...and put sulphur gases into the stratosphere...
...to form a haze that blocks off sunshine
That would prevent overheating from the sun
James Lovelock’s boldest prescription emerges...
...from his belief that the Earth is on the verge of a new era
One where the dominant form of life is artificial
I’m not concerned just with the evolution of lumps of flesh...
...that can move around and do things...
...and managed by a somewhat primitive intelligence
No I think it’s the evolution of intelligence...
...that is the key driver in the Darwinian process
He believes artificial intelligence...
...cyborgs will move beyond human control...
...generating intelligences far greater than our own
They will be far more capable than humans of tackling climate change
I would hope that cyborgs would do a much better job...
...of protecting the planet than humans have done...
...because they can think 10,000 times faster
If they worked strenuously hard to keep the...
...temperature of the planet at a safe and desirable point...
...then it would benefit them and enormously benefit us
Homo sapiens has been the dominant species on Earth...
...for tens of thousands of years
If the human race is to survive...
...James Lovelock believes the key...
...is for it to surrender its position of privilege...
...and give way to more intelligent life
We might think that cyborgs would be very bored with humans...
...and wouldn’t want to watch them at all because they’re so boring
But then I would say but you go to Kew Gardens don’t you...
...to watch the plants grow?
But of course there are things that even AI would struggle to control
Do I think humans can be saved from the...
...numerous threats that exist in the cosmos?
I don’t know, I hope so
