Table Of Content

GOD AND GAIA God and Gaia explores the overlap between traditional religious cosmologies and the scientific Gaia theory of James Lovelock. It argues that a Gaian approach to the ecological crisis involves rebalancing human and more-than-human influences on Earth by reviving the ecological agency of local and indigenous human communities, and of nonhuman beings. Present-day human ecological influences on Earth have been growing at pace since the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, when modern humans adopted a machine cosmology in which humans are the sole intelligent agency. The resultant imbalance between human and Earthly agencies is degrading the species diversity of ecosystems, causing local climate changes, and threatens to destabilise the Earth as a System. Across eight chapters this ambitious text engages with traditional cosmologies from the Indian Vedas and classical Greece to Medieval Christianity, with case material from Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, and Great Britain. It discusses concepts such as deep time and ancestral time, the ethics of genetic engineering of foods and viruses, and holistic ecological management. Northcott argues that an ontological turn that honours the differential agency of indigenous humans and other kind, and that draws on sacred traditions, will make it possible to repair the destabilising impacts of contemporary human activities on the Earth System and its constituent ecosystems. This book will be of considerable interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, history, and cultural and religious studies. Michael S. Northcott is Professor Emeritus of Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland; and Guest Professor at the Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, Leuven, Belgium. Routledge Environmental Humanities Series editors: Scott Slovic (University of Idaho, USA), Joni Adamson (Arizona State University, USA) and Yuki Masami (Aoyama Gakuin University, Japan) Editorial Board Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK Thom van Dooren, University of Sydney, Australia Georgina Endfeld, Liverpool, UK Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Australia Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA Iain McCalman, Australian Catholic University, Australia Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia International Advisory Board William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Germany Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA Kirsten Wehner, University of London, UK The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that today’s world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, over- population, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture. The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the human- focused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences. We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thought- ful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change. For more information about this series, please visit: www .routledge. com / Routledge -Environmental -Humanities /book -series /REH GOD AND GAIA Science, Religion and Ethics on a Living Planet Michael S. Northcott Designed cover image: Michael S. Northcott First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Michael S. Northcott The right of Michael S. Northcott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-62775-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-62774-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-11075-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003110750 Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India CONTENTS List of Figures vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 From Deep Time to Ancestral Time 8 2 In Borneo 40 3 Diversity and Development 66 4 Reverse Engineering Life 94 5 Biosecurity, COVID-19, and Human–Earth Healing 130 6 The Earth as Gaia 156 7 Gaia and God 187 8 Gaian Ethics 229 Index 267 FIGURES 0.1 James Lovelock and Timothy Lenton, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter, July 2019. Author photo. 2 1.1 Sea Kayaking off Arisaig, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, June 15, 2014. Author photo. 9 1.2 Deep Time Exercise, Outdoor Philosophy Retreat, Arisaig House, Scotland, June 14, 2014. Author photo. 10 1.3 ‘Geological unconformity’ in Glen Tilt, Scotland. June 8, 2016. Author photo. 12 2.1 Gunung Merapi seen from the campus of Universitas Gadjah Mada. Author photo. 45 2.2 Recently deforested peatland drying out in preparation for an oil palm plantation, Mount Ophir, State of Johor, West Malaysia, December 2019. Author photo. 48 2.3 Pygmy elephant, Kinabatangan River Conservation Area, July 2008. Author photo. 61 3.1 Leatherback turtle nest markings, West Sumbawa, Indonesia. Photo Esther Dispozici, June 2020. Author photo. 67 3.2 Old growth, species-rich forest, Blue Tier, Northern Tasmania, 2008. Author photo. 83 3.3 Clear-cut and burnt forest, Upper Florentine, Tasmania. Author photo. 84 4.1 Dolly the Sheep at a photo shoot on the cover of Donald and Anne Bruce, eds., Engineering Genesis. 1st Edition, London, Earthscan, 1998. © Taylor & Francis. 111 4.2 Electricity-generating turbine hall, Lake Manapouri, South Island, New Zealand, January 2008. Author photo. 113 Figures vii 5.1 Impromptu ‘lockdown’ bamboo barrier constructed by rural villagers in Bantul, Yogyakarta following media coverage of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak in March 2020. Author photo. 132 5.2 Rice harvest, Penestanan, Ubud, Bali, May 2020. Author photo. 149 6.1 James Lovelock in his laboratory in photo montage at Lovelock Centennial Exhibition, Exeter University, July 2019. Author photo. 157 7.1 Apse mosaic, St Clement, Rome. Author photo. 194 7.2 Saint Jerome and the Lion, Fra Filippo Lippi and Workshop, 1455–60, National Gallery, London. Author photo. 215 7.3 Icon of Gregory Palamas, Mount Athos. Photo made available under Creative Commons CCO 0.1 by Monastery of Vatopaidi, Mount Athos, Greece. 220 8.1 Water temple, Gianyar, Bali. Author photo. 235 8.2 Rice terraces and water temple, Gianyar Bali. Author photo. 239 8.3 The Knepp Estate, Sussex. Author photo. 249 8.4 Church apse, Rome. Author photo. 261 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I planned the outline of this book in the autumn of 2019 during a visit to the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, whose Tambora volcanic eruption in 1815 led to three years without summer in Europe, and global crop failures. The deep winter of 1815 led to the loss of nine-tenths of Napoleon’s army as it attempted a retreat from Moscow. The cold summer of 1815 was also the time in which Mary Shelley dreamt up the spectre of Frankenstein, which was a darkly prophetic novel about the coming impacts of modern science and technology on humanity and the earth. In 1815, no one knew that particles in the atmosphere from the huge explosion had reduced global sunlight for three years and cooled the planet. Only later did Earth System scientists real- ise that this is what had happened and so Sumbawa is a fitting place to have begun a book on the topic of the Gaia theory, also known as Earth System science, and its religio-cultural implications.1 Having obtained a contract from Routledge, I wrote the book during 2020– 2022 when I remained in Indonesia, and mainly in Yogyakarta in Java and in Canggu and Ubud, Bali, due to international travel restrictions and border clo- sures. My interactions with colleagues and students at the Graduate School of the Universitas Gadjah Mada were both offline and online throughout that time as I was lucky to be living in communities less affected by restrictions on social interaction than my former abode of Edinburgh, Scotland. I therefore had many informal face-to-face conversations on the topics in the book, including with Willem and Muriel Loots in Kampung Seseh, Bali, with Victor ‘Nightjar’ in Ubud, and with Iskandar Warowuntu, founder of the permaculture Bumi Langit Institute in Imogiri near Yogyakarta. Finding readers for my draft manuscript was more of a challenge far from colleagues in Europe and the United States. Besides the editors of the series in which it appears for Routledge, who offered overall encouragement, my Acknowledgements ix deepest thanks for reading through parts or wholes of what follows in a penultimate draft are to Richard H. Roberts of Stirling in Scotland, Alastair McIntosh of the Center for Human Ecology, energy analyst and author Wilf Wild, and Paul Tyson, Research Fellow of Queensland University, Australia. Paul gave me detailed feedback on the whole draft, pointed out mistakes, and encouraged me to pursue and undergird further the broad outlines of the connective thread – the argument – of the book. I am also thankful to John Milbank with whom I have had stimulating conversations over many years around the subjects of Gaia and God, and who gave me insightful leads as I researched the historic background to the modern Gaia theory in Indian, Greek, and Christian philosophy. I am also thankful to colleagues at the Indonesian Consortium of Religious Studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada with whom I discussed some of the ideas presented here and especially Zainal Bagir and Dicky Sofian. This book includes excerpts from previously published papers which were in the main the products of conference papers I was invited to give, and I am grate- ful to the hosts of those conferences for their hospitality in Trondheim, Norway; Munich, Germany; Lancaster, Cambridge and London, England; Paris, France; and to the publishers of the book chapters for their permissions to reprint them here in modified form. They are as follows: Chapter 1 includes revised excerpts from ‘Eschatology in the Anthropocene: From the Chronos of Deep Time to the Kairos of the Age of Humans.’ In Clive Hamilton, François Gemenne and Christophe Bonneuil eds., The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, Abingdon, Routledge, 2015, 87–99; and from ‘On Going Gently into the Anthropocene.’ In Celia Deane-Drummond, Sigurd Bergmann and Markus Vogt eds., Religion and the Anthropocene, Eugene, OR, Cascade Books, 2017, 19–34. Chapter 2 includes substantial excerpts from ‘Biofuel Energy, Ancestral Time, and the Destruction of Borneo: An Ethical Perspective.’ In Jonathan Chaplin and Marc Ozawa (eds.), Good Energy: The Economics and Ethics of Energy Sustainability, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 247–57; and excerpts from ‘Reading Genesis in Borneo: Work, Guardianship and Companion Animals in Genesis 2.’ In Nathan MacDonald, Mark W. Elliot and Grant Macaskill eds., Genesis and Christian Theology, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 2011, 190–203. Chapter 4 includes excerpts from ‘“Behold I Have Set the Land Before You” (Deut 1.8): Christian Ethics, GM Foods, and the Culture of Modern Farming.’ In Celia Deane-Drummond, Bronislaw Szerszynski with Robin Grove-White eds., Reordering Nature: Theology, Society and the New Genetics, London, T&T Clark, 2003, 85–106; and ‘Crop Science, the Heisenberg Principle and Resistance to Genetically Modified Organisms.’ In Phil McNaughten and Suzanna Carellero eds., Governing Agricultural Sustainability: Global Lessons from GM Crops, London, Routledge, 2015, ch. 13.