(((Knowledge Ecology)))

It seems that James Lovelock has backed down from some of his more apocalyptic predictions regarding climate change. THIS story has the details. I remember reading Lovelock’s views on climate change — which more or less state that the able bodied few need to migrate to the north pole before the whole earth cooks — and thinking they were a bit extreme. However, this does not at all erase the fact that we don’t yet know what impacts climate change will have, and, despite Lovelock’s more conservative reappraisal, it’s not clear that his original claims won’t still be correct at the end of the day. Climate change and mass extinction are THE ecological issues of the twenty-first century and we need to give everyone working on these issues enough space and support to re-modulate their understanding of these complex dynamics as much as possible.