ガイアに死す - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

Helena Horton “James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis, dies on 103rd birthday” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/27/james-lovelock-creator-of-gaia-hypothesis-dies-on-103rd-birthday

７月26日、「ガイア仮説」の提唱者であるジェームズ・ラヴロック氏*1が息を引取った。その日はちょうど103歳の誕生日だった。

Jonathan Watts*2, the Guardian’s global environment editor, who knew Lovelock and has been working on a biography about him, said: “The news is extremely sad, but what a life and what a legacy. Until very recently he was in good health and had a remarkable memory for events that happened almost a century ago. He was smart, funny and happy to share intimate details from his extraordinary life.
“It was thrilling to talk to one of the greatest minds Britain has ever produced. Here was a man who helped to shape many of the most important scientific events of the 20th century – Nasa’s search for life on Mars, growing awareness of the climate risks posed by fossil fuels, the debate over ozone-depleting chemicals in the stratosphere and the dangers of industrial pollution – as well as his work for the British secret services.”
Lovelock spent his life advocating for climate measures, starting decades before many others started to take notice of the crisis. By the time he died he did not believe there was hope of avoiding some of the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
Watts said: “Without Lovelock, environmental movements across the globe would have started later and taken a very different path. In the 1960s his ultrasensitive electron capture detector revealed for the first time how toxic chemicals were creeping into the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soil where we grow our food. He was the first to confirm the presence of fluorocarbons in the stratosphere and issued one of the earliest warnings that petroleum products were destabilising the climate and damaging the brains of children.
“His Gaia theory, conceived with the Pentagon consultant Dian Hitchcock and honed in collaboration with the US biologist Lynn Margulis, laid the foundations for Earth system science and a new understanding of the interplay between life, clouds, rocks and the atmosphere. He also warned, in clearer terms than any of his peers, of the dangers humanity posed to the extraordinary web of relations that make Earth uniquely alive in our universe.”

*1:See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%82%BA%E3%83%BB%E3%83%A9%E3%83%96%E3%83%AD%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF See also https://sumita-m.hatenadiary.com/entry/20090928/1254161228