At 94, James Lovelock is surprisingly optimistic about the future of the human race. The scientist and author – most famous for being the father of “Gaia theory” – believes that, although environmental disasters could reduce the human population to a few thousand individuals, there’s really no need to panic.

“We shouldn’t worry too much about terrible disasters because they’ve happened in the past and we’ve come back,” he said. “We are an extraordinarily special species, the first to harvest information.” Rather than being wiped out altogether, he says, we may develop into a new kind of species: part human, part robot. “It’s already happening. I’ve got a pacemaker, which is a very handy device and works like a dream. It’s coupled to the physiology of my body more or less completely, and, much more sinister, it has a radio communication with the outside world so that the technician can check it every year to see whether it’s working. This really bothers me, because I can see it’s only a matter of time before my body’s on the internet and receiving spam.”
(Stephen Moss, The Guardian).

Epicurus can be heard in the background muttering, “I’m glad I lived when I lived!” Maybe yet another extinction isn’t such a bad idea. We been there done that. Enough is enough! But I like the joke about the spam.