Quotes from James Lovelock

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.

Just after World War II, this country led the world in science by every way you could measure it, yet the number of scientists was a tiny proportion of what it is now.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

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.

Let's make hay while it lasts.

Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes.

Florida will be gone altogether, the whole damned place, in not too long.

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.

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

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.

You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.

Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time.

If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.

I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.

Climatologists are all agreed that we'd be lucky to see the end of this century without the world being a totally different place, and being 8 or 9 degrees hotter on average.

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.

I'm a scientist, not a theologian. I don't know if there is a God or not. Religion requires certainty. Revere and respect Gaia. Have trust in Gaia. But not faith.

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.

We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science

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

The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.