He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis.
"This report clearly indicates their full support for GM crops, and their intention to use their influence to open African doors for Monsanto's and Syngenta's patented GM crops," said Teresa Anderson, international advocacy co-ordinator for the Gaia foundation, an advocate of food sovereignty that asserts the right of people to define their own food systems.
But we have to grow food, so why not help Gaia do the job of CO2 removal for us?
No one would invest in plantations to make charcoal without a subsidy, but if we can show the farmers they can turn their waste to profit they will do it freely and help us and Gaia too.
At Gaia Online, users spend more than $1m per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm's chief executive.
Mr Lovelock thinks it is probably too late anyway, and that Gaia will shake herself and be rid of the plague of humans that now infest her skin.
Last year the gleefully independent author of "Gaia", "Revenge of Gaia" and "Vanishing Face of Gaia" inspired the reclusive glaciologist in Steve Waters's superb double-bill "The Contingency Plan" (reviewed in More Intelligent Life).
James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, receives extensive, largely uncritical, coverage when he predicts that global warming will have wiped out 80% of humankind by the end of the century.
The "Gaia" theory, which is the subject of the opening chapters, starts with the surprising observation that such things as the Earth's surface temperature and the salinity of its oceans have fluctuated remarkably little over billions of years despite, for instance, a significant increase in the power of the sun.
Oxford University Press; 440 pages; $52.95 and £29.95 An analysis of the evolutionary changes that took place on Earth in response to sudden changes in temperature or atmospheric conditions, by two followers of James Lovelock, the father of the popular theory of Gaia, the self-regulating planetary system.
Whatever the UNEP looked at tended to be close-to; one-off problems such as oil spills, nothing like the macroscopic Gaia vision that UNEP propounds these days.The programme's present director is Achim Steiner.
