Persephone Arbour

Whilst painfully watching the disaster in Haiti unfurling before my eyes, my mind went back to the 70s when Lovelock’s Gaia theory was all the rage.

In my rather simplistic mind, I imagined the earth as a self-healing planet. You and I, all the animals, insects, fish and birds all being of no more importance than the microscopic cells in our human bodies. The rivers and seas like our own veins, and the land and its geography the organs that keep us alive.

When we get sick, our bodies play up, cause great upheaval sometimes and need a firm shake up of the system to put things back on track healthily.

As I watched the damage, trauma, panic and death on my TV I asked myself the question: “Could this possibly be the earth shaking itself to cleanse and heal itself from the damage we have done and still continue to do?” Foolish woman you might say, however at the very least, as an analogy it seemed appropriate to me.

So I researched Youtube to find James Lovelock as he is today – aged 90. This delightful, gentle, passionate man explained what is happening to this beautiful planet of ours, in words that even I could understand. He is worth listening to. You may like to read the latest version of his book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia: The Final Warning (2010).