The article provides a lot of food for thought, though some of what he proposes may turn out to be fodder. I think that the truth is more a combination of the Gaia and Medea postulates, i. e., there are likely periods of stability where the earths various systems interact to achieve relative balance in between periods where life runs amock and almost wipes itself out.
I agree that there is likely too much being made about man's part in global warming, though we surely are doing a bang up job of polluting and contaminating the planet. Ward's idea of man having to take charge of managing the planet on a huge scale gives me more than a little pause.