Dorset professor who invented the microwave sends message of support to arts festival
102 year old James Lovelock is supporting Inside Out Dorset which their year focusses on sustainability, land use and life cycles
Last updated 15th Sep 2021
Pioneering Dorset-based environmental scientist James Lovelock has sent a personal message to the producers of Inside Out Dorset on the eve of the biennial international arts festival with its themes of sustainability, land use and life cycles.
The 102-year-old professor, who lives within a few metres of Chesil Beach, invented the microwave oven and the electron capture detector that made it possible to discover CFCs and other nano-pollutants in the atmosphere, but is best known as the originator of Gaia theory – the revolutionary idea that all life on Earth is connected and operates as a self-regulating community of organisms that interact with each other and their environment.
When he learned that Inside Out Dorset was using art to focus public attention on the climate emergency, he was moved to write:
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” So said Jesus in his sermon on the Mount. But the wise man added: “But not the mineral rights.”
Most of us laughed at his wit, but few realised he was right. The natural gas, the oil, the coal, and the oxygen are not ours to take to satisfy our greed. They are there to sustain life on our planet.
We are now only 22 years into what our Astronomer Royal said might be our final century. Yet already we are feeling the consequences, unendurable climate change.
It may not be too late to stop sinning. Let us use the natural energy of the cosmos – renewables and nuclear for our journey to the future.
Receiving the message, Inside Out Dorset co-artistic directors Kate Wood and Bill Gee said:
“James Lovelock’s ideas and inventions have shaped how we understand our precious planet so for him to take the time to encourage Inside Out Dorset is incredibly special. This year’s programme demonstrates how art and culture can inspire the people of Professor Lovelock’s adopted home of Dorset and beyond to engage with ideas that might just avert a climate catastrophe.”
Hosted by Dorchester-based outdoor arts producer Activate, Inside Out Dorset opens this weekend (17, 18 September) with artist Luke Jerram’s remarkable installation Gaia at Moors Valley Country Park and Forest. The seven-metre scale model of Earth offers an out-of-this-world opportunity to view our planet as an astronaut would see it from space, prompting thoughts about humanity’s effect on the planet.
Next weekend, 24 to 26 September, Gaia moves to the ancient landscape of the Marshwood Vale, within the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, at Park Copse on the Symondsbury Estate, near Bridport. At both sites it is accompanied by an artwork trail of site-specific events and performances responding to the climate emergency and our use of the land, including Two and a Half, a new outdoors dance theatre work from West Dorset-based Fingerprint Dance using music composed by Andrew Dickson who lives in Bridport and is best known for his work with film maker Mike Leigh. The piece is inspired by the 2.5-degree rise in Arctic sea temperatures due to climate change.
Inside Out Dorset also includes a full programme of outdoor circus events on Friday and Saturday (17, 18 September) in Poole’s Lower High Street and Quay and The Quomps in Christchurch before the stunning finale in Weymouth (Friday 24, Saturday 25 September) when the giant puppets of Dundu feature in a procession through the town lead by the relentless drummers of Worldbeaters playing a soundtrack inspired by world rhythms.
Full details of the programme.