Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change, says scientist

London, March 30 (ANI): James Lovelock, a globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist, has said that humans are too stupid to prevent climate change.

According to a report in The Guardian, Lovelock said that humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.

This statement follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November.

"The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful," he said.

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added.

"Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while," he said.

Lovelock believes that the world's best hope is to invest in adaptation measures, such as building sea defences around the cities that are most vulnerable to sea-level rises.

He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

"That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion," he said.

"Or a return of the dust bowl in the mid-west. Another Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report won't be enough. We'll just argue over it like now," he added.

Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism - the so-called Gaia theory, added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal.

He said he had not read the original emails.

"I felt reluctant to pry", but that their reported content had left him feeling "utterly disgusted," he said.

"Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science," he added. (ANI)