“billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” James Lovelock 2006
90 year old scientists rarely make much impact on the catwalks but then James Lovelock isn’t your average scientist and Vivienne Westwood certainly isn’t your average designer.
Dazed Digital has documented a fascinating and at times chilling interview featuring Dame Westwood quizzing one of her hero’s scientist, environmentalist and author, James Lovelock.
Lovelock has been one of the leading voices in the climate change debate having written and warned of it’s implications while an Inconvenient Truth was but a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye. Unfortunately for us – “us” meaning the human race – his calculations aren’t particularly optimistic.
Lovelock explains that the damage done to the planet via global warming is already beyond repair and that the course that we’re on cannot be diverted “look at us as the pullers of the trigger, accidentally.” We have to prepare for catastrophic ‘events’ that will lead to billions of deaths resulting in a culling of humankind to a more manageable level. He explains that human life will continue but only in the areas that will still be habitable such as Canada and Siberia.
The picture he paints sounds all too familiar for anyone who’s read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road . Westwood still maintains that positive change will lead to hope and unlike many is actually taking action through programs such as Active Resistance. With prediction’s as haunting as Lovelock’s hope may be all that we have.
So while you wait for impending death we highly recommend watching the video on Dazed Digital.
image via Dazed by Lina Scheynius
