“Now where was I?” muttered Dion. “Oh yes, NASA rejected Lovelock’s test for alien life because it didn’t jive with their plans for missions to Mars and Venus who’s atmosphere’s contain a shitload of carbon dioxide. Despite the rejection, this experience inspired Lovelock to ponder other potential ways in which a planet could be affected by the life living on it. And this lead him to come up with the Gaia theory. The theory, reduced to it’s most basic elements, is that the Earth is just one planet-sized organism and we’re all apart of it. He also believes that living organisms continually modify the planet to maintain it’s hospitality towards life.”

Wes was too high not to interrupt, “That’s definitely an interesting idea, but I’m going to need some proof before I buy into it.”

Dion laughed, “Always the skeptic aren’t you? Maybe I should just start calling you Scully. Ok here’s an example: sulphur is an essential element for living organisms, at least on this planet. Now, it has been found that some marine algae give off a sulphur-bearing gas called dimethyl sulphide. This gas seeds the formation of clouds whose rainfall contains sulphur and delivers it to land-based organisms. The rainfall also accelerates erosion which delivers nutrients back to the ocean and the algae. Futhermore, the rainclouds affect the amount of solar energy reaching the earth, affecting the growth of the organisms and keeping the entire feed-back loop under control.” Dion was glad that he managed to articulate that coherently as he was feeling lightheaded and extremely unfocused.

Wes thought about this for a few minutes and then replied, “So, if there’s a lot of sunlight, a lot of this algae will grow (as well as a lot of land-bassed plants) and that will produce rain clouds which will a) help create nutrients for the new plant life on land and at sea, and b) block out some of the sunlight, thus killing off some of the new life so it doesn’t grow out of control. And then when that happens there’ll be less algae and thus less clouds and more sunlight and so the plant life will grow back and then there’ll be more clouds so it’ll die again and…it just keeps going in circles”

Dion smiled, glad that his apprentice had caught on, “Yes circles within circles within circles. The never ending spirals that constitute the entirety of existence.”

Wes laughed aloud, “Dion, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Dion was taken aback, then he replied, “Nothin man…nothin at all…. Hey, do we have any more hash?”