Excellent book. I read James Lovelock's previous book, Gaia, and was impressed - in part. When I read that book, I felt he was unduly optimistic.

In this book, he struck a more pessimistic note. Since he wrote the earlier book, the world has moved closer to a tipping point. There is one theme that comes through persistently, which is this: the earth is a living system, and you cannot just address one small aspect at a time. It is only when we look at nature as a complex system, alive, that we will address how we live our lives.

He is skeptical about most clean energy projects and is a great proponent of nuclear energy. This is an area I need to explore.

James Lovelock pulls no punches, and his style is engaging.
Be prepared to have a few illusions shattered.

Read on.

There is another point he made consistently: we are almost out of time ( )

This book could've used a better editor. I often lost track during the chapters what Lovelock was talking about and many of his arguments seem to end halfway, without proper evidence or explanation. Having said that, I found it a provocative read that challenged some of the Green clichés and made me think about f.e. nuclear energy, the argumentative weight of carcinogenics and who are the actors that can make a change for the better occur. ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Lovelock-La-revanche-de-Gaia/1002265

> Un livre différent pour réfléchir sur l'avenir de la planète, à rebours de l'écologiquement correct ! Une opinion originale sur l'état des choses et sur les solutions envisagées pour demain : La Revanche de Gaïa - Pourquoi la terre riposte-t-elle ?, de James Lovelock, aux éditions Flammarion. L’auteur est bien connu puisqu'il est l’inventeur d'une théorie mondialement connue, « l’hypothèse Gaïa », qui veut que la Terre soit un être vivant doué d’une capacité d’autorégulation préservant les conditions propices à la vie. Dans son nouveau livre, Lovelock provoque par des solutions qui risquent d’en étonner plusieurs. Pour l'auteur, le développement durable n'est pas plus viable que la poursuite de nos activités. Il s'explique dans ce livre différent de 300 pages.
—La presse, 19 août 2007

Wie mijn mening wil kennen over dit boek, kan mijn volgende artikel in het magazine TeKoS lezen :-) ( )

In this work, Lovelock had succumbed to the lunatic fringe of the apocalyptic climate cult and seems to project his own mid-life crisis through the environmental fatalism presented here. Luckily, he's a brilliant man whose ego allowed him to change his mind later in life and renounce the position he held in this book. ( )