In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.

An “unwilling Cassandra,” he is nevertheless an "an optimistic pessimist" and thinks we will survive the coming Hot Epoch, but predicts climate change will reduce our population from 9 billion to around one billion or less.

"I don't think nine billion is better than one billion," Lovelock writes. He compares humans to the “first photosynthesisers, which, when they first appeared on the planet, caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen -- a nasty, poisonous gas.” Oxygen turned out to be beneficial to the life forms that evolved to utilize it, including us, but a global anaerobic ecosystem gave way in the face of this atmospheric change.

If simple microbial life forms could effect such a change, why is it hard to believe that humans could do so, too?

James Lovelock is an English scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurist. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he states that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.

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An AudioFile Golden Voice and Booklist magazine’s inaugural ‘Voice of Choice’, Simon has won two coveted Audie Awards and more than 20 Earphone Awards. His range includes classics such as Dickens and Trollope, modern thrillers, and many nonfiction titles, including an AudioFile Book of the Year.

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