GAIA

The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock is a powerful piece that should make us all feel guilty. It is rare to find someone who thinks of the Earth as a living breathing organism and that is truly sad. The Earth is living and breathing and we are just killing it. Gaia means the goddess of the Earth, in other words, mother Earth. If humans can give the Earth such a loving term as endearment "mother" then why do we continuously treat her like she does not have feelings?

The word revenge is the most important word in this text because it takes the Earth to another level of feeling. Not only does the Earth have feelings but she is very upset and we are the cause of it. She is lashing out in the form of natural disasters and now she is just packing up. In the text on the third page, in the end of the paragraph stretching from page two, it says "when the Earth was young and strong, it resisted adverse change and failure of its own temperature regulation; now it may be elderly and less resilient." This is just saying that the Earth has grown old and cannot take care of herself anymore and instead of helping her and supporting her, we constantly destroy her even more. Human beings are cruel, ungrateful, and spoiled organisms that do not understand the gravity of our actions.

Another word that is important is the word threshold. In the context of the reading, threshold is used to explain the outcome of passing the carbon dioxide levels in the air, but i think humans and the Earth are on the threshold of existence. We are standing on our entire existence and holding our breaths because we do not know what will happen. Everything is in the Earth's hands and the Earth is too tired to hold us anymore.