According to James Lovelock the independent futurist and father of the Gaia theory, by 2040 - well within the life-span of many Members - the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. The people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. He says that
"By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris - and indeed as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our Oceanic Position." Lovelock believes it is too late to repair the damage.
"If you take the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 - between 110F and 120F. It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow - there will be almost no food grown in Europe. We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think human beings as they are now are God's chosen race."Writing in the
Independent in January 2006, Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, by the end of the twenty-first century
"billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." He has been quoted also in the
Guardian, saying that eighty per centum of human life will perish by 2100 A.D., and this climate change will last 100,000 years.
He further predicts that the average temperature in temperate regions will increase by as much as 8°C and by up to 5°C in the tropics, leaving much of the world's land uninhabitable and unsuitable for farming, with northerly migrations and new cities created in the Arctic. As we have already seen he anticipates that much of Europe will become uninhabitable, having turned to desert, and that Britain will become Europe's "life-raft" due to its stable temperature from being surrounded by the ocean. He suggests that
"we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can."This indicates we think that most of the power stations should be turned off to-morrow, and that all private motoring should at once be outlawed. What do Members think? Do they not at bottom know that the estimable Lovelock is right?
