British scientist James Lovelock has died

THE British scientist James Lovelockwho became famous for his warning about her climate crisisfounder of the “Gaia Theory” which presents the Earth as a living organism capable of self-regulation, passed away at the age of 103as his family announced today.

“James Lovelock passed away yesterday Tuesday at his home, surrounded by his family, on his 103rd birthday,” it was announced by the family of the deceased. “He was world-renowned as a pioneer, prophet of the climate crisis and founder of the Gaia Theory,” the family’s statement said.

Presenting himself throughout his career as an “independent scientist,” Lovelock had clashed with colleagues over the his apocalyptic vision of the climate crisis.

“It is now too late, too late, to save the planet as we know it,” he told AFP in 2009, a few months before the failed Copenhagen Climate Conference (COP15). “Prepare for massive human losses,” he had declared, one of the few scientists at the time who predicted the bleak future.

Born in 1919, Lovelock grew up in south London and worked for 20 years at the British Institute for Medical Research. He was hired by NASA in the early 1960s and moved to California to work on research into the possibility of life on the planet Mars.

He became known for formulating the “Gaia Theory” in 1970, presenting the Earth as a living organism capable of self-regulation. At the time, his theory was hotly contested.

His genius made him the “Forrest Gump” of science, wrote Britain’s Guardian journalist Jonathan Watts.

“Arguably the most important independent scientist of the last century, Lovelock was decades ahead of his time,” notes London’s Science Museum.

Commenting on the Covid-19 pandemic, James Lovelock had told AFP in June 2020 that “it is killing my peers in particular – the elderly – and there are already too many of them (on the planet)” to then emphasize that “climate change is more dangerous to life on Earth than almost any other disease.”

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