For those who are unaware, the Gaia hypothesis refers to the concept of the planet earth as an organism. Given that construct, the sum total of environmentalism inevitably points to an evaluation of the health of Gaia. Global warming, deforestation of the tropical rain forests, pollution of the oceans from solid trash, industrial and home waste water, along with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere lowering ocean pH, constitute stressors for Gaia. The questions at hand are these: How will Gaia react to these stressors and if the life support systems start to break down, is there a tipping point which will cause a crisis?
In keeping with the truth as religion theme, I have to ask how much concern is there for the health of Gaia among the mainstream religions of the world. Since most mainstream religions place their concern on man and his disposition in relation to some supernatural being, the current environment and local ecology in which the individual exists appears to be a minor consideration. Save your soul and do not concern yourself with things of this world, etc.
If there is a supreme supernatural being, then why wouldn't this being consider the trashing of its largest living creature in the neighborhood (the solar system), to be a form of blasphemy? If man has been given this planet by the supreme being to live on, how did he come to believe that non-human forms of life weren't important and that the ecology of earth didn't matter, and could be considered disposable? I hear by suggest that any religion that fails to view the planet and the life on it as sacred has miss interpreted any message it claims to have received from any supreme being. If all life is not sacred, then no life is sacred. There are tiny, prehistoric tribes in the Amazon that understand this. Destroy the rainforest and man will not survive. Why is it that modern, industrial, scientific man does not understand this simple truth. I suggest that main-stem religion is the principle force deluding mankind with false ideas about the nature of reality.
Truth exists, but must be eternally sought. Anyone who claims to have the whole truth or the only truth worth knowing is a fool. They may be powerful fools...fools capable of destroying Gaia and themselves and all of mankind, but still...fools. Science provides a window on truth, but religion fails when it pretends that the truth about external reality is known and they can describe it.
