The biosphere, composed of countless living bodies, has multiple forms
of environmental “cybernetic” feedback, most of them doubtlessly not
modeled by the IPCC [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] or
others. Can you consciously and deliberately make your kidneys function?
Are you conscious of the blood flow through your arteries? We are just
one of an estimated 30 million extant species, over 99 percent of which
are now extinct. We are growing exponentially (there are over twice as
many people as when I was born), but this cannot last. Even more
worrisome is our warming of the planet, literally an example of global
thermodynamic dysfunction insofar as it impairs the ability of living
beings to continue accessing the concentrated energy of the sun and
exporting entropy as heat into space. Green beings — cyanobacteria and
plants — basically own the means of production. We and all animals are
freeloaders. The biosphere has lasted well over three billion years. It
absolutely does not need us. But we, “mammalian weeds,” as my mother
said, cannot live without Earth’s living surface. We depend on the
metabolic diversity of bacteria to recycle wastes into food, and on
plants to produce food from water, air, and light. Gaia augurs a
biological Copernican revolution in how we see ourselves. We are not
alone, neither within our bodies nor as parts of ecosystems.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/gaia-versus-the-anthropocene-a-conversation-with-dorion-sagan/
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