I often believed as a young man that William Shakespeare was highly over-rated as a writer but only with time & experience did I learn that I was wrong. The magic of the master not only lies in his craft but his brilliant interpretation of human mind & relevance of his writing to all mankind, irrespective of the changes in time & social structure.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
I cannot but go back to these lines as I read what James Lovelock has once again reiterated at the Royal Society in London. The renowned writer of the ‘Gaia’ theory, in which he states the self-regulatory mechanism with which the planet functions, has claimed that the planet is on an inevitable course towards destructing itself. As, he tells the world that suddenly & completely stopping the burning of all fossil fuel would actually enhance global warming, I cannot but reflect on the lines of ‘Hamlet’, which show the utter state of confusion in the mind of Hamlet.
In the famous soliloquy, Hamlet wonders if he should indeed be pro-active & work towards a certain target (in his case; revenge) by defying all odds or if he should just accept defeat & let his soul rest (in the form of death). While this might seem irrelevant as a comparison, my mind cannot help but wonder if the statement of Lovelock is very similar in its structure. With him proclaiming that we are doomed one way or the other, the question is to burn or not to burn fossil fuel?
According to Lovelock even the grimmest predictions of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which bagged the Nobel Peace Prize for this year, are an understatement of the fact. Reality, has says, is far more grave. His theory is that burning of fossil fuel produces a global haze in the Earth’s atmosphere which actually reduces the temperature of the earth by a couple of degrees by shielding it. A sudden absence of such shield would prove disastrous for the planet.
He says,
We’re damned if we continue to burn fuel, and damned if we stop too suddenly.
The key word here is ‘too suddenly’. Fine, that is two words. Anyway, the world is not that far progressed in alternate fuel technology to stop fossil fuel burning with such a sudden effect. Hence, I assume we are all safe & ‘Gaia’- the spirit of the planet will forgive her erring children & will give them an opportunity to redeem.
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