James Lovelock, best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis and for his warnings that greenhouse gases will accelerate global warming, is now 101. While he launched a hundred green and eco-movements, he diverges from most by being pro-nuclear energy – “only nuclear power can now halt global warming” – pro-fracking and anti-wind turbine.
He was born 26 July 1919 2 pm in Letchworth England and started his professional life performing cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing frozen specimens. He invented the electron capture detector, and became the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis.
He apologised at one point for his ‘alarmist’ assertion that as a result of global warming, “billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century. He still believes the climate to be warming although the rate of change is not as he once thought and he has criticized environmentalists for treating global warming like a religion.
He is a visionary Sun Neptune in Leo – Neptune being surprisingly common amongst rarefied scientists and mathematicians – with a full 9th house of widespread communication. His Jupiter in late Cancer is in a confident conjunction to his Sun. He also has a super-determined and opinionated Mars Pluto in Cancer in the 9th in an inventive trine to Uranus. His Mars Pluto would tend to incline him towards catastrophic fears and to sinking his teeth into controversies and hostile debates.
He also has a well-organised Saturn conjunct Mercury in his 10th which would pull him back when he recognised he had allowed his concerns to run away with him.
Venus in Virgo is his only Earth planet in that odd way of people consumed with an interest on all matters earthy. He has leant on his missing function to guide his life – which was Carl Jung’s theory. The road to transformation lies through what we are least familiar with.
His creative 5th and 7th Harmonics are strong; as is his leaving-a-legacy 17H.
How do you explain his longevity (101 years old)?