James Lovelock
James Lovelock
James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRSis an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth26 July 1919
mistake taken animal
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.
christian years humanity
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.
iceland environmental survivor
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.
nuclear global-warming halt
Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.
engineering worry mutation
I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.
florida long gone
Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long.
oil nuclear rivals
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.
hay lasts
Let's make hay while it lasts.
earth doe purpose
Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes.
oil people burning
The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.
christian religious winning
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.
our-actions action consequence
For each of our actions there are only consequences.
population pairs climate
By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.
future ignorance feelings
We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science