This extensively revised and expanded edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and suburban gardeners. The text's message is that working with nature, not against it, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens.

A critical examination of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia hypothesis One of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that life itself has intervened in the regulation of the planetary environment in order to keep it stable and favorable for life. First proposed in the 1970s, Lovelock's hypothesis remains highly controversial and continues to provoke fierce debate. On Gaia undertakes the first in-depth investigation of the arguments put forward by Lovelock and others—and concludes that the evidence doesn't stack up in support of Gaia. Toby Tyrrell draws on the latest findings in fields as diverse as climate science, oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. He takes readers to obscure corners of the natural world, from southern Africa where ancient rocks reveal that icebergs were once present near the equator, to mimics of cleaner fish on Indonesian reefs, to blind fish deep in Mexican caves. Tyrrell weaves these and many other intriguing observations into a comprehensive analysis of the major assertions and lines of argument underpinning Gaia, and finds that it is not a credible picture of how life and Earth interact. On Gaia reflects on the scientific evidence indicating that life and environment mutually affect each other, and proposes that feedbacks on Earth do not provide robust protection against the environment becoming uninhabitable—or against poor stewardship by us.

Manu of us believe that Earth to be sentient or feeling, but we are disconnected from her because we can't understand her vibrations and impressions. Gaia, the sentience of Earth, speaks to us through Pepper Lewis, teaching us how to be attuned to the Earth and to learn from her.

Humanity stands at the threshold of a new phase of Earth’s planetary evolution. Breathtaking possibilities – in tune with the evolutionary path of the universe – are now available. Yet the question arises: Does humanity have the ideas, foresight and potential for action that could create a culture that corresponds to the planet’s transformation? In the midst of distressing ecological crises, Marko Pogačnik offers fresh hope. Having worked intensively in the fields of holistic ecology (geomancy) and Earth-healing for four decades, he now formulates a vision of a culture based on co-creation with Gaia (the Earth), her elemental worlds and beings from parallel evolutions. Creating Gaia Culture is also a workbook, featuring dozens of drawings and meditative exercises to help transcend mental obstacles by cultivating the quality of living imagina­tion. Pogačnik – UNO Goodwill Ambassador and UNESCO Artist for Peace – presents numerous ways to collaborate with the process of creating Gaia culture. He allows us to look into the primeval source of the future by interpreting the ancient book of the biblical Apocalypse – a text that holds the secret of Earth changes in a coded vision of a new human civilization – and uses his experiences, visions, dream stories and communications with beings from parallel worlds to trigger pictures that can enable a new human culture become a tactile reality. ‘The only path that makes sense is to reconnect with the essence of life and embrace a loving partnership with Gaia, Earth. This path involves a challenging transformation of our current cultures and may provoke changes in many aspects of the embodied world as we know it, as we continue to evolve into the future.’

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.