Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
perate regions due to a massive injection of greenhouse gases similar in magnitude to
our own untimely gaseous exudations. Then, under a sun some 0.5% less bright than
today's, the warming gases were vented either from the dissolution of methane clathrates
or from the melting by an undersea volcano of a large deposit of buried organic carbon.
Even though Gaia's great wild ecosystems were everywhere intact during the Eocene, it
took 200,000 years for the biologically assisted weathering of granite and basalt to cool
the planet. And here is the point for the sceptics to ponder—we have partially disabled
Gaia by taking over about half of her land surfaces, and the sun is now hotter, so it seems
likely that we are propelling our planet into an Ecocene-like 200,000-year warm period,
in which most of the low and middle latitudes could become deserts. This is effectively
an infinite span of time for humans—our descendants will never directly experience the
wild beauty of vast tropical forests, or the miracle of the great wildebeest migrations on
the plains of Africa.
And now, a note of caution. We need to reflect on what deeper meanings we might
discern in the great whirling feedbacks that we have been considering. Are they, perhaps
more akin to the psyche of the very Earth itself than to the so-called 'objective' pro-
cesses that we describe with our sciences? If Jung is right, if our psyche is none other
than the psyche of nature, then the feedbacks we have explored are as much a part of us
as the churning of our intestines, as the rhythm of our breath and as the coursing of our
blood through our veins. If so, then by wounding Gaia we wound ourselves, both physic-
ally and psychologically. Perhaps the most profound way we can make peace with Gaia
is to feel ourselves extending outwards beyond our skins into the wide, living world of
Gaia's gyring, eddying 'circles of participation'. Perhaps only then will the painstaking
work of science have finally done its deeper work of bringing us home to the great liv-
ing community in which we are indissolubly embedded. Otherwise, for us, our animate
Earth will continue to become an increasingly desperate Earth.
