James Lovelock famous quotes

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;
-- James Lovelock

#Book #Cutting #Years

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

#People #Genocide #Commit

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

#Dance #Evolution #Environment

Those of us who consider ourselves to be somehow involved in the birthing of a new age, should discover Gaia as well. The idea of Gaia may facilitate the task of converting destructive human activities to constructive and cooperative behavior. It is an idea which deeply startles us, and in the process, may help us as a species to make the necessary jump to planetary awareness.
-- James Lovelock

#Ideas #Age #Tasks

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

#Shapes #Favors #Environment

I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E. O. Wilson reminded us, tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruellest of ways for the good of our tribe. We still find alien the concept that we and the rest of life, from bacteria to whales, are parts of the much larger and diverse entity, the living Earth.
-- James Lovelock

#Wise #Thinking #Our World

The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.
-- James Lovelock

#Whales #Atmosphere #Viruses

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

#Desert #Forests #Easier

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Energy #Windmills #Schemes

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

#Land #Environmental #Beef

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Climate #Hot #States

Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.
-- James Lovelock

#Country #War #Numbers

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Average #World #Degrees

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Jobs #Negative #Way

I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
-- James Lovelock

#Meaningful #Clever #Thinking

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Oil #Fossils #Nuclear

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Years #Evolution #Mechanic

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Years #Climate #Lifetime

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

There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells.
-- James Lovelock

#Life #Rocks #Cells

Only rarely do we see beyond the needs of humanity, and he linked this blindness to our Christian and humanist infrastructure. It arose 2,000 years ago and was then benign, and we were no significant threat to Gaia. Now that we are over six billion hungry and greedy individuals, all aspiring to a first-world lifestyle, our urban way of life encroaches upon the domain of the living Earth.
-- James Lovelock

#Christian #Years #Humanity

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

#Wind #Turbines

By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.
-- James Lovelock

#Climate #Population #Pairs

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

#Stupid #Climate #Conservation

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

#Cells #Earth #Way

Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational.
-- James Lovelock

#Two Sides #Growth #Ignorant

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Space #Looks #Earth

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

#Littles #Individual #Evidence

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

#Engineering #Worry #Mutation

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

#Florida #Long #Gone

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

#America #Global Warming #Problem

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

#America #Revolution #Regimes

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Oil #Nuclear #Rivals

Let's make hay while it lasts.
-- James Lovelock

#Hay #Lasts

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.
-- James Lovelock

#Civilization #Long #Form

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Running #Earth #Planets

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

#Clever #Viruses #Host

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

#Doe #Purpose #Earth

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

#Nuclear #Campaigns #Surprise

For each of our actions there are only consequences.
-- James Lovelock

#Our Actions #Action #Consequence

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

#If There Is A God #Scientist #Certainty

Science always uses metaphor.
-- James Lovelock

#Use #Metaphor

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Climate #Usual #World

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

#Oil #Coal #Pounds

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Mistake #Making Mistakes #Grants

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

#War #Space #Russia

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

#Rain #Cutting #Forests

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

#World #Millennium

So-called 'sustainable development'... is meaningless drivel.
-- James Lovelock

#Development #Drivel #Sustainable Development

I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.
-- James Lovelock

#Lying #Book #Understanding

By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions.
-- James Lovelock

#Moving #Atlanta #Europe

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Iceland #Environmental #Population

I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn't mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don't believe me go out and do the measurements yourself.
-- James Lovelock

#Believe #Data #Mind

Ask almost anybody if they think the climate?s changed in the last couple of decades and they will all say ?yes? and give you lots of examples.
-- James Lovelock

#Couple #Reality #Thinking

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Fall #Knowing #Sailing

Our planet... consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb... Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.
-- James Lovelock

#Stars #Fall #Fire

I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.
-- James Lovelock

#Views

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

#Thinking #Awful #Pessimist

Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with the other words in perfect syntax. There is no place for verbosity or carelessness. To become fluent in a computer lnaguage demands almost the antithesis of modern loose thinking. It requires many interactive sessions, the hands-on use of the device. You do not learn a foreign language from a book, rather you have to live in the country for year to let the langauge become an automatic part of you, and the same is true for computer languages.
-- James Lovelock

#Country #Book #Writing

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. 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. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.
-- James Lovelock

#Book #Cutting #Years

We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science
-- James Lovelock

#Future #Ignorance #Feelings

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

#Democracy #Way #Climate

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

#Oil #People #Too Much

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.
-- James Lovelock

#War #Issues #Feelings

We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
-- James Lovelock

#War #Issues #Feelings

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.
-- James Lovelock

#Book #Science #Civilization

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Crazy #War #Humanity

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Sunshine #Space #Shade

What I tend to do is to wake about five in the morning-this happens quite often-think about the invention, and then image it in my mind in 3D, as a kind of construct. Then I do experiments with the image...sort of rotate it, and say, 'Well what'll happen if one does this?' And by the time I get up for breakfast I can usually go to the bench and make a string and sealing wax model that works straight off, because I've done most of the experiments already.
-- James Lovelock

#Morning #Thinking #Imagination

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.
-- James Lovelock

#Mind #Important #Climate

We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
-- James Lovelock

#People #Climate #Fool

Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.
-- James Lovelock

#Nuclear #Global Warming #Halt

I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.
-- James Lovelock

#Religious #Way #Standards

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

#Meaningful #Inertia #Humans

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,
-- James Lovelock

#Years #Twelve #Rising

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another.
-- James Lovelock

#Mistake #Taken #Animal

No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire.
-- James Lovelock

#Science #Data #Games

The apologists for space science always seem over-impressed by engineering trivia and make far too much of non-stick frying pans and perfect ball-bearings. To my mind, the outstanding spin-off from space research is not new technology. The real bonus has been that for the first time in human history we have had a chance to look at the Earth from space, and the information gained from seeing from the outside our azure-green planet in all its global beauty has given rise to a whole new set of questions and answers.
-- James Lovelock

#Real #Technology #Engineering

It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion. I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.
-- James Lovelock

#Christian #Religious #Thinking