Gaia's evil twin: Is life its own worst enemy?

Lovelock eventually began to refer to the planet itself as some kind of superorganism. "The entire range of living matter... from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts," he wrote in his 1979 book Gaia: A new look at life on Earth. In other words, the Earth is not simply a planet that harbours life, it is itself alive.

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