If It Can Suffer, It's Real

Eloquent and true as far as it goes, but I think it applies well to the domain of human beings and animals but fails to account for the suffering of this planet, which seems real to me. Or rather, it would be difficult to apply the test and readily sort truth from fiction and metaphor regarding Gaia. Is the Gaia hypothesis only a lovely metaphor ? Or is the earth itself suffering when it's systems fall apart, rivers dry up, trees die and burn? This is not the same as saying Germany or a bank is suffering. This planet is not an abstraction or a metaphor. Yet I still think the author is on to a valuable distinction. 

From what I know of Gaia -- that all creation is one interrelated system from and of Life -- I believe it. And I think it's obvious earth is suffering. Rocks, plants, fish, animals, and human beings including us are of earth, and human beings are seriously and maybe fatally harming earth and ourselves and all the rest. Earth suffers people.