"We are at the end of our tether, and the rope, whose weave defines our fate, is about to break."
So writes our most eminent planetary physician in a prognosis which likens climate change to a morbid fever which may soon leave only the Arctic regions habitable for the future remnants of human kind.
His cure is an immediate switch to nuclear power as part of a drastic attempt to lower carbon emissions while more long-term solutions are developed. He pours scorn on thoughts of sustainable development and calls instead for a wartime collective effort to manage a sustainable retreat.
Not since Darwin has one individual had such an effect on the way we consider life on this planet. In 1957, Lovelock invented groundbreaking technology for the detection of infinitesimal traces of pesticides which then provided the material for Rachael Carson's book Silent Spring.
In the mid-1960s he worked with Nasa trying to determine whether there was life on Mars. That lead him to question what you would know of life on Earth, if you were in turn to look back on it from space. This top-down view of the planet gave birth to his "Gaia" theory, which described how our Earth appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating its climate and chemistry in a way that always allows a comfortable state for life.
Just as Darwin raised biology from a cataloguing activity into a science, Lovelock has changed the way we understand evolution. What evolves are not just organisms but the whole Earth system, with its living and non-living parts existing as a tightly coupled entity.
His first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, was written in 1979 to "stimulate and entertain". It was ahead of its time on the subject of climate change but only called for vigilance on the matter. This latest book is much more alarming as new evidence foretells an imminent shift in our climate. He bemoans the fact that our understanding of the threat to Gaia is "still in the conscious mind alone and not yet the visceral reaction of fear".
Gaia has kept the planet fit for life for some three billion years, (a quarter of the time the universe has been in existence) but its task is getting more difficult as the heat from our sun has increased some 25 per cent over the same period. Gaia prefers a colder planet as oceanic life increases with the mixing of cold and hot layers of water and algae growth decreases once water temperatures rise above 10 degrees centigrade. The polar ice caps help keep the planet in that preferred cooler state but the evidence is becoming ever more stark that the Arctic ice cap in particular is starting to melt.
Lovelock describes how the planet is being hit by a "double whammy", as greenhouse gases are released from the burning of fossil fuels at the same time that we are clearing more protective natural habitats to provide for agricultural land. He includes a graph with climate change predictions from 1988, which shows the actual temperature increases since then have been closest to the worst case scenario.
Sticking to that trend we can expect a five degree centigrade average increase in temperature by the middle of this century and catastrophic events within our own and not just our children's lifetime. Most worryingly he argues that we may be close to a tipping point when such change becomes irreversible. He lists a number of "positive feedback mechanisms" such as the increasing inability of seas to take up the carbon dioxide in the air or the melting of the permafrost releasing large stores of methane, which may trigger runaway climate change.
Lovelock also cites what he calls the three Cs of "combustion, cattle and chainsaws" as the battleground for action. At the same time he rails against what he terms "urban environmentalists" for what he sees as a misguided and excessive concern about the sources of cancer in human beings. He also pours scorn on his fellow environmentalists whom he fears may turn the countryside into a renewable energy production line so that we can simply maintain our current fossil fuel lifestyles.
Plans for wind turbines on the hills surrounding his own house in rural Devon are depicted as an assault on the author's last rural retreat and contact point with Gaia. I sense that this battle has coloured his analysis and leads to him underestimating the practical problems, costs and dangers associated with nuclear power. The truth will only emerge in a proper scientific and economic analysis of the alternative energy options, which I believe most environmentalists want to see happen.
In the meantime I would agree to differ with him on the nuclear issue while applauding his broader message on climate change. Sceptics may doubt that message and scientists may recoil from Lovelock's use of myth and metaphor to get it across but no-one could doubt his ability to explain complex science in an easy and convincing manner.
Lovelock defines a green as someone who has sensed the deterioration of the natural world and wants to do something about it. The very dreams and future of mankind are woven into the cloth of our natural world. We are tearing it apart and we need to wake up to that reality before it is too late.
The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back and How We Can Still Save Humanity By James Lovelock Allen Lane, 192pp. £16.99
Eamon Ryan is a TD and Green Party spokesperson on Energy Environment