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
oil people burning
The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.
war issues feelings
We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
book science epidemics
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.
war crazy sigh-of-relief
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.
sunshine space would-be
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.
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.
years evolution mechanic
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.
climate hot states
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.
meaningful clever thinking
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.
oil nuclear coal
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.
our-actions action consequence
For each of our actions there are only consequences.
years climate lifetime
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.
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.
stars fall long-ago
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.