James Lovelock Quotes

I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

There aren't just bad people that commit genocide; we are all capable of it. It's our evolutionary history.

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.

Let's make hay while it lasts.

Perhaps the single most important thing that we can do to undo the harm we have done is to fix firmly in our minds the thought: the earth is alive.

Nature favors those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power.

All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.

If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.

We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price.

Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.

Climatologists are all agreed that we'd be lucky to see the end of this century without the world being a totally different place, and being 8 or 9 degrees hotter on average.

Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy.

If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.

I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

China will soon emit more greenhouse gases than America, but its regime knows if it caps aspirations there will be a revolution.

The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail.

If it hadn't been for the Cold War, neither Russia nor America would have been sending people into space.

If a power station were to be built down the road, I'd prefer a nuclear plant over an oil burner, and definitely over a coal burner. We simply have to lessen our consumption of fossil fuels.

Science always uses metaphor.

This programme to stop nuclear by 2020 is just crazy. If there were a nuclear war, and humanity were wiped out, the Earth would breathe a sigh of relief.

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.

A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.

You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.

The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.

Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes.

Esso has been the main one in America spreading the disinformation that there is no global warming problem.

Nowadays if you're dependent on a grant - and 99% of them are - you can't make mistakes as you won't get another one if you do.

I wouldn't be against them (large wind turbines) if they actually worked.

One pound of uranium is worth about 3 million pounds worth of coal or oil.

So-called 'sustainable development' is meaningless drivel.

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year.

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.

I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.

Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.

The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.

Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long.