James Lovelock

Science always uses metaphor.

— James Lovelock

Let's make hay while it lasts.

— James Lovelock

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.

— James Lovelock

For each of our actions there are only consequences.

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

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

— 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

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

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

— James Lovelock

The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation…

— 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

There is no clear distinction anywhere on the Earth's surface between living and nonliving matter. There is merely a hierarchy of intensity…

— James Lovelock

“Science is a cosy, friendly club of specialists who follow their numerous different stars; it is proud and wonderfully productive but never…

— James Lovelock

Perhaps the single most important thing that we can do to undo the harm we have done is to fix firmly in…

— 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

We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die…

— James Lovelock

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some…

— James Lovelock

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a…

— James Lovelock

“The difference between the long-term average of the graph and the ice age, 12,000 years ago, is just over 3°C. The IPCC…

— James Lovelock

By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a…

— James Lovelock

“City wisdom became almost entirely centered on the problems of human relationships, in contrast to the wisdom of any natural tribal group,…

— 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…

— 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…

— James Lovelock

“When we burn fossil fuel for energy we are, in qualitative terms, doing nothing more wrong than burning wood. Our wrongdoing, if…

— James Lovelock

The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting…

— James Lovelock

“One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of…

— 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…

— James Lovelock

“Others consider us superior because of our cultured ways and intellectual tendencies; our technology lets us drive cars, use word processors and…

— James Lovelock

We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but…

— James Lovelock

The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some…

— James Lovelock

I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E.…

— James Lovelock

Composing computer programs to solve scientific problems is like writing poetry. You must choose every word with care and link it with…

— James Lovelock

“The totalitarian greens, sometimes called ecofascists, would like to see most other humans eliminated in genocide and so leave a perfect Earth…

— James Lovelock

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

— James Lovelock

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty.

— James Lovelock