"I had never even heard of a “James Lovelock” before now, and after skimming the comments here, my desire to know about him went from zero to negative."

Although I question the conclusions, I feel that having read his original work "The Gaia Hypothesis"[1] is required to be broadly literate in our age.

It's a short book.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis