Book description
Kit Pedler, the scientist who co-created the Doomwatch' television
series to warn us of the dangers of technology, presents his vision of
a totally different way of being in the world. Mankind, Pedler
believes, stands at a critical point in history and has to reassess
its relationship and the web of interactions that make up the total
life-form of the planet. Pedler calls this life-form Gaia, after the
Greek earth mother goddess, a being whose sole concern is the survival
of the planet itself. Mankind is provoking the wrath of the life-form
by its high technology, accelerating entropy and production of
planetary disorder. Can we halt the technological Behemoth and live in
harmony with the planet again? Kit Pedler says yes, we can, indeed,
that we have no choice but to do so'. He outlines highly practical
ways every individual can change his or her way of life to reduce our
personal entropy debt. Do we need to eat factory-farm beef rather
than, the sun-product, grain? Must be build homes from steel and
concrete rather than, the renewable earth-product, timber? Is there an
alternative to expensive, and ecologically destructive, drugs? From
experiments with his own lifestyle Kit Pedler comes to some profoundly
optimistic conclusions. He demonstrates how low-entropy living can
have unexpected rewards, from restoring our respect for the creatures
with which we share the earth, greater independence and freedom
through learning abandoned skills and, above all, by the recovery of a
lost vision, once possessed by our forefathers, which enables us to
see and feel in ways forgotten by industrial man. The Quest for Gaia
is an exhilarating and optimistic book, and a challenge to capture a
rewarding and sustainable future for ourselves and our earth. It is a
blueprint for the Age of Gaia.
