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
second-guessing
You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.
should-have years rising
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,
views personal-views
I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.
couple reality thinking
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.
party humanity earth
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.
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.
taught scientist certain
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.
meaningful inertia humans
The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
life rocks cells
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.
wind-turbines wind turbines
I wouldn't be against them (large wind turbines) if they actually worked.
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.
stupid climate conservation
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades.
moving europe sea
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.
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.