J Lovelock Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

Science always uses metaphor. — James Lovelock

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

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

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. — James Lovelock

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

The idea that humans are yet intelligent enough to serve as stewards of the Earth is among the most hubristic ever. — James E. Lovelock

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

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 E. Lovelock

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

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

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

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 E. Lovelock

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 E. Lovelock

In Lovelock's view the earth was a 'super-organism,' a cybernetic feedback system that 'seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.' At the suggestion of his neighbor, author and screenwriter William Goldman, he called the system Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess. — Steven Kotler

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

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

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

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

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

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

I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organizations devoted to decommissioning nuclear power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide. — James E. Lovelock

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

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

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

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