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.

My justification of nuclear power is that we’ve reached a stage now where the dire things that threaten us are so great that even the results of an all-out nuclear war pale into insignificance as unimportant compared to what’s going to happen.

• You seem to say we have to get over the idea that renewable energy sources—wind, solar—in the short run, are a useful way out of this.

I feel they’re largely gestures. If it makes people feel good to shove up a windmill or put a solar panel on their roof, great, do it. It’ll help a little bit, but it’s no answer at all to the problem.

• What is it about this issue that fails to capture adequate public or political attention?

I think it’s mainly because scientists, and I include myself among them, have not really understood what was going on until very, very recently. And also scientists tend to look at things much too academically.

• Your book says sustainable development is a fantasy, essentially, and you have a different notion for what needs to happen, of “sustainable retreat.”

At six-going-on-eight-billion people, the idea of any further development is almost obscene. We’ve got to learn how to retreat from the world that we’re in. Planning a good retreat is always a good measure of generalship.

• If you could take any facet of society—elected officials, doctors, writers—and show them one thing that you think could motivate the scale of change you’re talking about, any idea what you might do?

I would take them on a trip to the parts of the world where the changes are now maximum, and that is the Arctic. For example, not many years ago explorers were walking with dogsleds all the way to the North Pole regarding it as a great adventure. It’s only a matter of perhaps 30 years when they’ll have to go there in a sailboat. (ANDREW C RIVKIN)