Sustainable retreat

Sustainable retreat is a concept developed by independent research scientist Dr. James Lovelock, who is well known in ecological circles for developing the Gaia theory, in order to define the necessary changes to human settlement and dwelling at the global scale with the purpose of adapting to global warming and preventing its expected negative consequences on humans as portrayed in his latest book The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity published in 2006.^[1]

Lovelock thinks the time is past for sustainable development, and that we have come to a time when development is no longer sustainable. Therefore we need to retreat. Lovelock in an interview with Rolling Stone states the following in order to explain the concept:^[2]

"To Lovelock, the whole idea of sustainable development is wrongheaded: "We should be thinking about sustainable retreat.

"Retreat, in his view, means it's time to start talking about changing where we live and how we get our food; about making plans for the migration of millions of people from low-lying regions like Bangladesh into Europe; about admitting that New Orleans is a goner and moving the people to cities better positioned for the future. Most of all, he says, it's about everybody "absolutely doing their utmost to sustain civilization, so that it doesn't degenerate into Dark Ages, with warlords running things, which is a real danger. We could lose everything that way."

The concept of sustainable retreat emphasized a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs with lower levels and/or less environmentally harmful types of resources.

See also

• Ecological debt
• Ecological deficit
• Greenhouse debt

References

1. ^ Lovelock, James (2006). The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back - and How We Can Still Save Humanity. Santa Barbara (California): Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9914-4.
2. ^ Goodell, Jeff. (2007). "The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock". Rolling Stone. Available from the WWW: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_climate_change_james_lovelock. (This quotation is from the fourth page of the article.)