FEW scientists have elicited such equivalent heaps of praise and criticism as James E. Lovelock, the British chemist, inventor and planetary diagnostician who has long foreseen a clash between humans and their planet.

The electron capture detector he invented in the 1950s produced initial measurements of dispersed traces of pesticides and ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons, providing a foundation for studies revealing risks to the atmosphere’s ozone layer.

Lovelock, a feisty 87, has now come under attack from some environmentalists for his support of nuclear power as a way to avoid runaway “global heating”—his preferred alternative to “global warming.” In his latest book, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back— and How We Can Still Save Humanity (Perseus, 2006), Lovelock says risks posed by nuclear power are small when compared with the “fever” of heat-trapping carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuels.

• Why do you call it global heating and not global warming?

Warming is kind of cozy and comfortable. You think of a nice duvet on a cold winter’s day. Heating is something you want to get away from.

• Can you explain why you think nuclear power is so vital?

The really bad thing we did way back when was starting to burn things in the atmosphere to get energy. We started with fire, just cooking food, and probably could have gotten away with that. But once we started burning forests to drive the animals out as a cheap way of hunting, then we started on our downward course. What we’re doing now with fossil fuels is just as bad. We live in a nuclear-powered universe. We’re the oddballs by getting energy from burning carbon.

... contd.