Quotes from James E. Lovelock

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.

Unfortunately, we are a species with schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them.

I speak as a planetary physician whose patient, the living Earth, complains of fever; I see the Earth's declining health as our most important concern, our very lives depending upon a healthy Earth. Our concern for it must come first, because the welfare of the burgeoning mass of humanity demands a healthy planet.

We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.

I find it sad, but all too human, that there are vast bureaucracies concerned about nuclear waste, huge organizations devoted to decommissioning nuclear power stations, but nothing comparable to deal with that truly malign waste, carbon dioxide.

Present-day politicians seem to assume that we merely have to 'decarbonize' the Earth's atmosphere by sustainable development and the use of renewable energy, and global warming will be under control.

There is nothing essentially bad about the idea of renewable energy, but when it is enforced by dogmatic ideologues wholly ignorant of both science and engineering, it is potentially both dangerous and ruinous.

The idea I am trying to launch here is: the appearance of new species naturally and the appearance of new inventions by artifice are both responses to need.

Camels, unlike most animals, regulate their body temperatures at two different but stable states. During daytime in the desert, when it is unbearably hot, camels regulate close to 40°C, a close enough match to the air temperature to avoid having to cool by sweating precious water. At night the desert is cold, and even cold enough for frost; the camel would seriously lose heat if it tried to stay at 40°C, so it moves its regulation to a more suitable 34°C, which is warm

we live on a live planet that can respond to the changes we make, either by cancelling the changes or by cancelling us.

It is not the amount of oxygen that determines flammability, but its proportion in the mixture with nitrogen.

but such is the inertia of industrial civilization that we are likely to go on using fossil fuel for a decade at least.

For the same energy output as from coal or oil, methane combustion releases only half as much carbon dioxide. This implies that powering a nation entirely by gas reduces emissions of carbon dioxide by half.

For what,' I asked, 'is wrong with a steady-state economy?' Their response could almost be described as one of shock-horror, as if I had uttered an obscenity. One of them – my friend, Sydney Epton – said, 'Jim, you must understand that without growth there would be utter chaos; the whole system of modern economics is dependent on growth.' Taken literally, sustainable development simply means growth.

Metaphor is important because to deal with, understand, and even ameliorite the fix we are now in over global change requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system, not something inanimate like that disreputable contraption 'spaceship Earth

This false belief that we own the Earth, or are its stewards, allow us to pay lip service to environmental to environmental policies and programmes but to continue with business as usual.

The warm surface layer is stable, and except in fierce storms, like hurricanes, it stays intact and the cooler waters below do not mix with it.

six billion people.

The Earth was never seen as a whole until astronauts viewed it for us from outside, and then we saw something very different from our expectation of a mere planet-sized ball of rock existing within a thin layer of air and water. Some astronauts, especially those who travelled as far as the moon, were deeply moved and saw the Earth itself as their home. Somehow we have to think like them and expand our instinctive recognition of life to include the Earth.

The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to the be stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.

I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life.

It sounds good to try to save the planet, but in reality we are not thinking of saving Gaia, we are thinking of saving the Earth for us, or for our nation.

As Talleyrand memorably said, 'The truth is whatever is plausibly asserted and confidently maintained.' If I tell you something three times you will believe it, said the Bellman, and usually we do.

To expect sustainable development or a trust in business as usual to be viable policies is like expecting a lung cancer victim to be cured by stopping smoking; both measures deny the existence of the Earth's disease, the fever brought on by a plague of people.