Lovelock Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

I speak as a planetary physician whose patient, the living Earth, complains of fever; I see the Earth's declining health as our most important concern, our very lives depending upon a healthy Earth. Our concern for it must come first, because the welfare of the burgeoning mass of humanity demands a healthy planet. — James E. 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

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

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

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

Science always uses metaphor. — James Lovelock

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

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

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

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 E. Lovelock

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

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

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

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

The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth. — Rupert Sheldrake

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

Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior; it begins where the crustal rocks meet the magma of the Earth's hot interior, about 100 miles below the surface, and proceeds another 100 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the even hotter thermosphere at the edge of space. It includes the biosphere and is a dynamic physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for over three billion years. I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries. — James E. Lovelock

One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States' Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War. Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets. — James E. Lovelock

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

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

City wisdom became almost entirely centered on the problems of human relationships, in contrast to the wisdom of any natural tribal group, where relationships with the rest of the animate and inanimate world are still given due place. — James E. Lovelock

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

What we have lived through, the 20th century, has been like a great party. Adults now have had the best time humanity has ever had. Now the party is over and the Earth is reckoning up. — James Lovelock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When we burn fossil fuel for energy we are, in qualitative terms, doing nothing more wrong than burning wood. Our wrongdoing, if that is an appropriate term, is taking energy from Gaia hundreds of times faster than it is naturally made available. We are sinning in a quantitative not a qualitative way. — James E. Lovelock

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

Contact means the exchange of specific knowledge, ideas, or at least of findings, definite facts. But what if no exchange is possible? If an elephant is not a giant microbe, the ocean is not a giant brain. — James E. Lovelock

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

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

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

As James Lovelock writes, 'Mother Earth' is now an old lady in her sixties, no longer as resilient as she once was. With our conscious actions, we are now measurably shortening her lifespan. — Mark Lynas

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

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

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

The totalitarian greens, sometimes called ecofascists, would like to see most other humans eliminated in genocide and so leave a perfect Earth for them alone. At the other end of the spectrum are those who would like to see universal human welfare and rights, and somehow hope that luck, Gaia or sustainable development will allow this dream to come true. Greens could be defined as those who have sensed the deterioration of the natural world and would like to do something about it. They share a common environmentalism but differ greatly in the means for its achievement. — 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

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. 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

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

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

Others consider us superior because of our cultured ways and intellectual tendencies; our technology lets us drive cars, use word processors and travel great distances by air. Some of us live in air-conditioned houses and we are entertained by the media. We think that we are more intelligent than stone-agers, yet how many modern humans could live successfully in caves, or would know how to light wood fires for cooking, or make clothes and shoes from animal skins or bows and arrows good enough to keep their families fed? — James E. 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia. — James Lovelock

That is the sort of race which one really enjoys - to feel at one's peak on the day when it is necessary, and to be able to produce the pace at the very finish. It gives a thrill which compensates for months of training and toiling. But it is the sort of race that one wants only about once a season. — Jack Lovelock

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

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

James Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of our time. His ideas and inventions have opened up new insights into our planet and the way it works, and the story behind them will appeal to a very wide audience. I am pleased to recommend this book. — Chris Rapley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Earth has recovered after fevers like this, and there are no grounds for thinking that what we are doing will destroy Gaia, but if we continue business as usual, our species may never again enjoy the lush and verdant world we had only a hundred years ago. What is most in danger is civilization; humans are tough enough for breeding pairs to survive, and Gaia is toughest of all. What we are doing weakens her but is unlikely to destroy her. She has survived numerous catastrophes in her three billion years or more of life. — James E. Lovelock

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

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

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

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