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Global Change and the Earth System by W. Steffen and others, Springer-Verlag, £77/$129, ISBN 3540408002 Reviewed by Fred Pearce

THERE are two sorts of concern for the environment. There is all that touchy-feely stuff about saving cuddly animals, and there is saving the planet from humanity’s mega-depredations. Earth-system science deals with the latter. It deals with how our planet works, and offers suggestions about how we might avoid the Gulf Stream shutting down, save the ozone layer and stop the oceans from turning so acid that they dissolve the coral reefs.

It’s a crowded agenda. And this scholarly but highly readable primer to the fate of the Earth, written by a dozen leading lights in a worldwide scientific network known as the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, seems to cover a new global peril on almost every one of its 300-odd pages. After spreading deserts and blooming oceans, Asian brown haze and the sulphur cycle, global warming almost seems like an afterthought.

One remarkable development on show in Global Change and the Earth System is the extent to which the Gaia hypothesis has taken over research into Earth systems, guiding researchers to new feedback between the geosphere and the biosphere. Will Gaia save us, after all? Probably not. The bad news seems to be that all Gaia’s comforting negative feedbacks – designed, as true Gaians would have it, to maintain a habitable planet – are being overwhelmed and could be heading for chaotic mode. Hold onto your hats.