Gaia

Well James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis have written quite a bit about this.It was Lovelock's theory, ably aided a abetted by Lyn Margulis. Now I have to write and say what it means in a few lines today.

As I see it life began about 3500 million years ago plus or minus.Life started changing the environment it found itself in by gradually rusting the earth. Oxydising it until the excess Oxygen started accumulating in the atmosphere which had been mostly CO2 to begin with. Oxygen was of course toxic to many of the bacteria at the time an so made it more unfavorable for themselves but favorable for the creatures that evolved and were able to use the oxygen themselves.The earth as we know it now was created by life itself and is in a delicate balance.It seems to maintain that balance of temperature, pH,Oxygen, Co2, methane,hydrogen and a few other elements, mainly Nitrogen and the chemistry of the oceans. If the oxygen was to increase to say 30% everything from forests to grasslands would simply self ignite and combust. Below 15% we would find it difficult to exist.So our very existence depends on this balance, yet we are busy trying to change it through the distruction of the forests and life in the sea, soil erosion, pollution, burning of fossil fuels and so on.

Gaia acts as a self regulating living organism, but will it be able to self regulate if we change the environment to a point of no return or will it just shrug us off and carry on with out us. Take New Zealand as an example. Life that created the environment consisted of forests yet we have destroyed a greater part of those forests and replaced them with ryegrass and clover with little root system to hold the soil which is being lost at twenty times as fast as it was under forest. Can these pastures play as greater part in this self regulation as the forests?.