It was James Lovelock who first suggested that there would be a very few countries which would escape the worst vagaries of the oncoming Climate Change…
Much of our media remains silent about the problem and there hangs an eerie silence in the air around centres of political machinations.
Our extractive mentality and the demand for higher profits combine to destroy our very own habitat..this is the truth of what’s happening worldwide…we cannot escape our acquisitive nature! 
We appear to be caught in a vicious circle of greed versus need…and we know which one of those two is winning!
This is another Bank Holiday weekend here in Ireland and the pubs, takeaway food shops and restaurants are doing a roaring trade!
Over 56 billion farmed animals are killed every year by humans.
These shocking figures do not even include fish and other sea creatures whose deaths are so great they are only measured in tonnes…has anyone else noticed the scarcity of fish like Cod and Haddock in our supermarket deep freeze and the sly introduction of Pollack?
Yes, fish stocks are in decline, as evidenced in the supermarket offerings!
We are gobbling up our habitat at an alarming rate!
Throughout the world, about 900 million trees are cut down annually, as of 2014.
That equates to about 2.47 million trees cut down every day.
But, hold on, I hear you say…what was that you said about James Lovelock and…?
According to The Irish Times report in 2009: James Lovelock is perhaps the world’s leading thinker on environmental issues – and his prognosis for the future of humanity is grim. In Ireland to speak at University College Dublin this week, he tells RONAN McGREEVY why he thinks climate change is irreversible and why Ireland may become ‘a lifeboat for humanity’
Yes, that’s right, ” a lifeboat for humanity!”
According to scientist James Lovelock, we are on the cusp of a global catastrophe that will make the present recession look trivial.
Within 30 years, he believes, the Arctic’s floating summer sea ice will all be melted. The polar caps will no longer reflect sunlight back into space and, instead, the ocean will absorb sunlight, heating up. The permafrosts in northern Canada and Siberia will thaw out, releasing carbon dioxide (CO2). At the same time, the tropical forests, which play a critical role in taking CO2 from the atmosphere, will die out. Global temperatures will rise by between five and six degrees in a short period of time, rendering most of the world uninhabitable for the vast majority of mankind.
What sets Lovelock apart from other climate scientists, most notably the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the swift timetable he envisages and his belief that such change is irreversible and will take most of the human race with it. (Irish Times 2009)
Lovelock is a former NASA chief scientist.
James Lovelock invented the electron capture device (ECD) whch alerted the world to the depletion of the ozone layer…remember the aerosol crisis?
However, he is most famous for the Gaia hypothesis, now a theory, that the world is itself a living organism…and one I know to be true!
Though his predictions for the world are dire, his predictions for Ireland are of some small comfort. Because of our proximity to the sea, our relatively high latitude and our low population density, we may be spared the worst excesses of global warming.
He says Ireland, along with New Zealand, will be the “most fortunate countries on earth”. We will be a “lifeboat for humanity”, but a lifeboat can only take so many passengers.
~ Irish Times 2009
Personally I think there will be many places that will make the transition successfully, but the criteria for these places will be different according to geographical regions.
How do any of the generation that will meet this head on prepare for the crisis?
Well we can begin by practicing living with less, using less, consuming less and growing more…and build a new way of living with Mother Earth from there!
It continues to be developed at Bealtaine Cottage…
Bealtaine Cottage Good Life membership is 12 euros per year and allows me a small income to continue to grow the Bealtaine Project both here in Ireland and in the hearts and minds of good people all over the world.
Please join…
This is not a blog about Climate Change or, even, extreme weather…enduring it is quite enough! 
This is about an extraordinary human being, who, 400 years before James Lovelock, set out the case for our Earth being alive…as I know her to be today! 
For this and other beliefs, Giordano was burned at the stake in the year 1600. 
Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian 
He is remembered for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then novel 
He proposed that the 
He also insisted that the universe is in fact 
Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for 
So, you can begin to see why I have warmed to this rather extraordinary and brave human being!
Not, as some would imagine, for having strong views…but for daring to question!
Bruno’s 
The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was 
In short, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake just over 400 years ago for maintaining that the Earth was alive!
After many years of isolation in the science community, James Lovelock was acknowledged as the bearer of truth, sometimes a painful burden to carry in a society fixated with staying well inside the box!
I know from my intimate work with Mother Earth, that she is indeed alive.
Her voice grows louder with each passing day…indeed, many of you hear or feel her communication.
The change in acceptance of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory was summed up in a declaration published by scientists from the four international research programmes in 2001 which said…
“The Earth system behaves as a single, self-regulating system,comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components. The interactions and feedbacks between the component parts are complex and exhibit multi-scale temporal and spatial variability.” 
We need to make peace with Her…and to do that we need to listen!
For the 99 percent of the time we’ve been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine. 
As an integral part of the global awakening that is happening, humankind are being called back to the earth, to reconnect with Gaia. 
Not everyone is feeling this at the same time…as each one of us on our own sacred journey comes to experience in own time. 
This morning, awakening around six thirty, I ventured out into the gardens to experience the early morning mist, which, as I type at almost 11am, prevails.
Ireland has been experiencing some incredibly good weather in recent weeks and so it goes on. 
In other parts of the world, devastating storms have wreaked havoc! 
Yet, in all of this uncertainty and upset, the advance of those seeking to connect with Mother Earth increases. 
We are like lost children in need of the comfort of a parent.
And perhaps this is a good thing, for to be like children on this Sacred Earth will connect us much easier than any other way. 
So what is it about children that gives them the advantage in understanding their place in the Universe? 
Could it be that they are naturally curious? 
Have we allowed our lives to become subsumed in the detritus of the material world? 
I often pass gardens where all is so perfectly straight and neat that I actively squint in attempting to see Mother Nature…and often I do not see Her at all!
Yet I know that control of Nature brings unhappiness and discontent…the sort of feeling where frustration begins to eat at one’s very soul! 
So what are the tools we need to enable us to reconnect with Mother Earth.
I have the privilege to be able to observe small children when they visit Bealtaine with their parents and it is nothing less than a joy to behold! 
They hold the keys to the kingdom! 
What a joy it is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more,
