X-Nico

Earth immune system

James Lovelock's book "The Revenge of Gaia" suggests that Gaia has many mechanisms for eliminating civilisations that do harm through greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, but suggests that with increasing heat being received from the sun, Gaia's ability to "bounce back" as it did after the Permian and Cretaceous extinction events, may be increasingly compromised.

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An opposite view is that humankind is Gaia's immune system itself, perhaps evolved to avert future catastrophes such as the Permian and Cretaceous mass extinctions of species.

see also