What is Gaia theory’s relevance to us as the rest of the century unfolds? You might think it’s the contribution it makes to future climate models, enabling us to predict what will happen if we keep on pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thereby providing with a much-needed warning.
But for many this is esoteric work and feels irrelevant to daily life. Instead, I look instead to Gaia’s potential power as a modern Origin Story for Life on Earth.
From its humble beginnings as a tiny single-celled Archaean organism to its current dazzling biodiversity, Life can now be seen as a self-regulatory mega-system interacting profoundly with rocks, atmosphere and oceans to create conditions in which Life can continue to evolve. It has suffered many setbacks resulting from cataclysmic events such as meteor strikes and huge outpourings of lava, but has always bounced back, even if it has taken millions of years to do so.
In many ways it is similar to the Origin Myths of the First Nation peoples, only this one is couched in the language of Earth System Science. This makes it just as interesting and compelling – if not more so, for Gaia provides a bridge between Modern Science on the one hand, and Ancient Myth on the other.
As with myth, it provides meaning. Instead of us being condemned to living in a random universe, where Life is “red in tooth and claw”, we now have a vision of humanity as deeply interconnected with the Lifeweb, in which our actions have profound effects that ripple out through the Biosphere, and come back to us in unseen looping trajectories. This is how Stephen Harding sees humanity in Animate Earth (2006), whose cover heads up this post (Stephen was tutored by Lovelock).
Let’s tell the story of how we came to inhabit this planet, one that reaches back in time nearly four Billion years. Lovelock’s conclusion, that we have the potential to become Gaia’s guiding intelligence, and which is echoed today in pop science programmes like Chris Packham’s TV series Earth, is a hopeful one.
Of course, it’s dependent upon us seeing ourselves as Earth-citizens, coming together and not only listening to the science, but acting upon it. Only then can we can finally move beyond our cherished identities, which results in the clash of rival cultures, including the conflict between “rational” scientists on the one hand, and “irrational” people of faith on the other.
If – collectively – we begin to see ourselves as actors in the Lifeweb, not passive consumers but as beings with responsibilities to maintain and restore this web, then we do, indeed, begin to become Gaia’s guiding intelligence. And what an inspiring prospect that is!
bioregioning 
I hesitate to think of humans as a guiding intelligence, based on present experience, if nothing else.
Gaea is the guiding intelligence, embodied in our true self. We have but to follow the Gaea within us to discover and follow the Way.
I agree that humans have not yet showed signs of becoming a guiding intelligence. However, there are groups and organisations dedicated to Gaia and I think that with education – hence this series of posts – we can build capacity and begin not only to follow the Gaia within us as individuals, but get out of our silos and unite around the concept of Gaia.