Gaia

This book presents a fascinating theory that life created an atmosphere favorable to life. The sun is much hotter than when life began. Life kept the temperature beneficial to life by removing greenhouse gasses from the air. Organisms created an atmosphere high in oxygen.

The book is exciting and educates the reader on the interaction of life and the geophysical environment. This book is relevant to and influenced my theory that all species increase biodiversity, the theory about which I wrote the two books I am featuring here.

Lovelock’s revolutionary discovery that earth’s living matter—air, ocean, and land surfaces—forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep our planet a fit place for life.  

It is vital in instilling the knowledge in all those who inhabit the earth that Gaia (the Greek goddess of the earth) is not inert matter but a living organism. 

As we imagine the earth as a living being, we may have second thoughts about doing her further harm… 

This beautifully written book continues to exert massive influence, in politics as well as science. The author applied physiological thinking to the ecosystem scale and saw evidence of a global entity with the characteristics of a self-regulating, self-repairing organism. Like the Superorganism choice above, this book made me start to think at different levels at the same time, and see yet more wonder in our amazing planet.