Quotes from Tim Flannery

A tree's most important means of staying connected to other trees is a "wood wide web" of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods.

One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood

As long as scepticism is based on a sound understanding of science it is invaluable, for that is how science progresses. But poor criticism can lead those who are unfamiliar with the science involved into doubting everything about climate change predictions.

Malta has a rich and varied faunal history, including dwarf elephants and hippos, and a giant, flightless swan that stood taller than the island's pachyderms.

But in 1972 Dutch palaeontologists Bert Boekschoten and Paul Sondaar announced that the bones came from an unusual, tiny hippo, which they named Phanourios minor—'small manifested saint'; the cave had been visited for centuries by villagers seeking the fossilised bones of their 'saint', who they believed could cure various maladies.1

While we sit in our air-conditioned homes and eat, drink and make merry like cattle in a feedlot without the slightest thought about the consequences of our consumption of water, food and energy, we only hasten the destruction -in the long term- of our kind.

The Moors, who settled many parts of southern Europe in the eighth century, proved to be enthusiastic naturalisers. They are strongly suspected of, or were clearly responsible for, the introduction of at least four important mammal species into Europe: the Barbary macaque, porcupine, genet and mongoose.

Heck's attempted rewilding serves to reinforce a very important fact: Europeans are now the mind over their land. What they desire, the land will become. And if their desires are toxic and dangerous, then that will manifest itself in nature. Europeans cannot escape responsibility for shaping their environment; as even withdrawal from management will have profound consequences.

beg them to compare the Oostvaardersplassen not with their dreamtime Europe of the classical age, but with a long-vanished continent where large mammals, rather than agricultural practices, shaped landscapes.

There are now more wolves in Europe than in the United States, including Alaska!

All abiding good comes, as it has been well said, by evolution not by revolution…

it's not so much our technology, but what we believe, that will determine our fate.

more Australians now die of heat stress than die on the roads.

Nicholas Pateshall, A Short Account of a Voyage Round the Globe in H.M.S Calcutta 1803–1804, ed. Marjorie Tipping, Queensberry Hill Press, Melbourne, 1980, 56–64.

Brains are notoriously selfish organs. They give themselves priority access to everything they require—from blood-flow to warmth, nutrients and oxygen. During times of bodily stress, our brains will shut down one organ after another, even to the point of damaging them—before depriving themselves. Brains are also greedy. They make up just 2 per cent of our body weight, yet take 20 per cent of the energy we use.

Unlike Darwin, Wallace seems to have had no fear that an understanding of evolution would corrupt public morality—indeed he saw the evolutionary process, and our understanding of it, as potentially ushering in a wonderful future. I think that's because Wallace realised that while evolution by natural selection is a fearsome mechanism, it has nevertheless created a living, working planet, which includes us, with our love for each other, and our society.

Goodstein demonstrated that in every case, when compared with the actual costs paid, the estimates were grossly inflated.6 His examples range from asbestos to vinyl, and in all instances but one the estimated cost flowing from regulatory change was at least double the actual cost paid, while in some cases estimates were even more exaggerated.

It's often said that there are two fundamental sentiments that decide an election—hope for the future, and fear of it. If hope prevails, we're likely to elect more generous governments and reach out to the world, but if fear prevails, we elect inward-looking, nationalistic ones.

If you're concerned about our future, it's not just desirable that we eradicate poverty in the developing world, create more equal societies and never let ourselves fight another war; it's imperative, for the discount factor tells us that failure to do so may cost us the Earth.