Simple forms of life can put up with a lot, and did. And they changed the planet, or at least its outer skin, by putting in feedback loops that made it less liable to change. They started Gaia. This is the name that James Lovelock gave in 1982 to the concept of the Earth as a complex living system – metaphorically, an organism in its own right. The idea has been romanticised into the Earth being a kind of Earth-mother, but what do you expect when you attach the name of a goddess to your new scientific concept?
