J Lovelock Quotes

#1. Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.

James Lovelock

#2. Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them.

James E. Lovelock

#3. 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

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

James Lovelock

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. 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

#9. 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

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

James Lovelock

#11. The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever.

James E. Lovelock

#12. I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.

James Lovelock

#13. 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

#14. One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it.

James Lovelock

#15. I always thought we had an environmental problem, but I hadn't realized how urgent it was. James Lovelock writes that by the end of this century there will be one billion people left.

Vivienne Westwood

#16. 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

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

James Lovelock

#18. 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

#19. For each of our actions there are only consequences.

James Lovelock

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

James Lovelock

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. Yes, I'm afraid the life over here is very different from N.Z. but oh boy it's a grand life.

Jack Lovelock

#24. Science is a cosy, friendly club of specialists who follow their numerous different stars; it is proud and wonderfully productive but never certain and always hampered by the persistence of incomplete world views.

James E. Lovelock

#25. 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

#26. Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They've gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it ... Let's be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.

James Lovelock

#27. 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

#28. Darwinists are right to say that selection favours the organisms that leave alive the most progeny, but vigorous growth takes place within a constrained space where feedback from the environment allows the emergence of natural self-regulation.

James E. Lovelock

#29. Big occasions and races which have been eagerly anticipated almost to the point of dread, are where great deeds can be accomplished.

Jack Lovelock

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

James Lovelock