"FEW of us," according to Dr James Loverock, "have avoided the experience of imagining that we were the victims of some fatal but romantic disease; it usually happens after reading a medical textbook and identifying our minor symptoms with those that are described. In the affluent parts of the world, society may be collectively undergoing the same experience - the difference being that the apparent hypochondria is about the world at large rather than about the individual self."
Loverock himself is optimistic on these matters. He is the originator of what is called the Gaia Hypothesis - a theory which postulates a symbiotic bond between life itself and the environment in which it exists. The name comes from Gaia, the goddess of the ancient Greeks who symbolised our "Mother Earth".
To illustrate his point, Loverock has invented an imaginary planet which he calls "Daisyworld". The mean temperature of this planet, as with ours, is a balance between the heat received from the sun and the heat lost to cold space in the form of radiation. White daisies are the only form of life on Daisyworld, and their rate of growth depends on temperature.
The daisies on Daisyworld influence the temperature of their own surroundings. If the temperature of the planet rises slightly for some reason, the number of daisies increases - and the increased area of whiteness reflects more sunlight, cools the planet and restores the temperature to its former value. Likewise, a drop tin temperature reduces the number of daisies; there is less reflection - and so the temperature climbs again. The daisies maintain their surroundings at a temperature that suits them!
Daisyworld, of course, is just a parable. But Loverock argues that life and the atmospheric environment are very closely linked parts of a whole system - a system with an elaborate feedback mechanism which has dictated the way in which the whole planetary collage has evolved.
His thesis is that this coupling is so strong that no element of the system can be considered in isolation, and that the combination has developed in such a way that it can regulate and repair itself. If it is knocked off balance - by a catastrophic event like being hit by a giant meteorite, for example, or by the more gradual effects of a phenomenon like global warming - it can repair the damage, and life, although not necessarily any individual species, will survive. It means that life as a whole is very robust and may be, dare we say it, even immortal.