Quotes from Mark Lynas

even if all fossil fuel runs out (or we decide to leave it in the ground so as not to fry the planet), there is no conceivable shortage of nuclear fuel to burn in fast reactors.

There is no doubt that new designs available today are dramatically safer than those of the past, and that the potential for severe accidents in future vastly reduced.

As James Lovelock writes, 'Mother Earth' is now an old lady in her sixties, no longer as resilient as she once was. With our conscious actions, we are now measurably shortening her lifespan.

Make no mistake: opposing low-carbon technologies is an implicit vote for a high-carbon energy system, and opponents must recognise this real-world trade-off."[

In other words, we are losing the war on carbon precisely because we are winning the war on poverty.

It is ironic but nonetheless true that for developing countries the best way to protect against the future effects of climate change is currently to burn more fossil fuels and thereby accelerate their economic development.

In terms of our energy mix, therefore, and despite tablet computers, synthetic biology and Twitter, we are really only mid-way through the Industrial Revolution.

Eco-romantics may fantasise about the pre-fossil fuels economy of the past, but the reality of pre-industrial agrarian society really was slavery, war, famine, disease and a short average lifespan for everyone except a very privileged aristocratic few.

The Indian farmer suicide story is a myth built on tragic individual anecdotes and extrapolated to a whole country by those like Vandana Shiva with an ideological axe to grind and little concern about the true facts.

Let's be clear about the real-world impact of this activism however. Aubergine farmers in both India and the Philippines have sprayed millions of pounds of additional insecticides thanks to the activities of Greenpeace, Vandana Shiva and other anti-GMO campaigners and groups in denying them the opportunity to grow Bt brinjal.

A new world With five degrees of global warming, an entirely new planet is coming into being-one largely unrecognisable from the Earth we know today. The

Modern Humans have at least dealt out death fairly: We began our existence by killing each other.

Once the 'portals of the future close - in Amazonia, Siberia or the Arctic - we will find ourselves powerless to affect the outcome of this dreadful tale.