67+ James Lovelock Quotes On Religion, Education And Constitution

James Lovelock was a British scientist and environmentalist who developed the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth is a self-regulating system. He is also known for inventing the electron capture detector, which is used for detecting CFCs and other pollutants. He also worked on space exploration and was involved in the Viking program to Mars. Following is our collection on famous quotes by James Lovelock on religion, leadership, education.

Top 10 James Lovelock Quotes

1. NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station.
2. I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
3. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.
4. There aren't just bad people that commit genocide; we are all capable of it. It's our evolutionary history.
5. Let's make hay while it lasts.
6. I suspect any worries about genetic engineering may be unnecessary. Genetic mutations have always happened naturally, anyway.
7. Nature favors those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive.
8. The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power.
9. 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.
10. All the modelling we do shows that the climate is poised on the jump up to a new hot state. It is accelerating so fast that you could say that we are already in it.

James Lovelock Short Quotes

• Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.
• If we gave up eating beef we would have roughly 20 to 30 times more land for food than we have now.
• An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
• I wouldn't be against them (large wind turbines) if they actually worked.
• You mustn't take what I say as gospel because no one can second-guess the future.
• One pound of uranium is worth about 3 million pounds worth of coal or oil.
• Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.
• There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.
• Only nuclear power can now halt global warming.
• The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

James Lovelock Quotes About Climate Change

Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational. — James Lovelock

I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while. — James Lovelock

The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil. — James Lovelock

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. — James Lovelock

Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy. — 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

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

Ask almost anybody if they think the climate?s changed in the last couple of decades and they will all say ?yes? and give you lots of examples. — James Lovelock

James Lovelock Quotes About Earth

The Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes - Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin. — James Lovelock

This programme to stop nuclear by 2020 is just crazy. If there were a nuclear war, and humanity were wiped out, the Earth would breathe a sigh of relief. — James Lovelock

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA. — 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 going from the 'material' environment of the rocks and the atmosphere to the living cells. — James Lovelock

Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor. — James Lovelock

The entire range of living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth's atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts. — James Lovelock

Perhaps the single most important thing that we can do to undo the harm we have done is to fix firmly in our minds the thought: the earth is alive. — James Lovelock

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

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. — James Lovelock

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. — James Lovelock

James Lovelock Quotes About Science

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text. — James Lovelock

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. — James Lovelock

No one who has experienced the intense involvement of computer modeling would deny that the temptation exists to use any data input that will enable one to continue playing what is perhaps the ultimate game of solitaire. — James Lovelock

Science always uses metaphor. — James Lovelock

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

James Lovelock Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — James Lovelock

China will soon emit more greenhouse gases than America, but its regime knows if it caps aspirations there will be a revolution. — James Lovelock

Our future is like that of the passengers on a small pleasure boat sailing quietly above the Niagara Falls, not knowing that the engines are about to fail. — James Lovelock

I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead. — James Lovelock

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

Our planet consists largely of lumps of fall-out from a star-sized hydrogen bomb. Within our bodies, no less than three million atoms rendered unstable in that event still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago. — James Lovelock

By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions. — James Lovelock

The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that. — James Lovelock

I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen. — James Lovelock

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. — James Lovelock

For each of our actions there are only consequences. — James Lovelock

One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it. — 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. — James Lovelock

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

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

We need a more authoritative world...What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while. — James Lovelock

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

I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn't mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don't believe me go out and do the measurements yourself. — 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 and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. — James Lovelock

Those of us who consider ourselves to be somehow involved in the birthing of a new age, should discover Gaia as well. The idea of Gaia may facilitate the task of converting destructive human activities to constructive and cooperative behavior. It is an idea which deeply startles us, and in the process, may help us as a species to make the necessary jump to planetary awareness. — James 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. — 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 alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened. — James Lovelock

We are the intelligent elite among animal life on earth and whatever our mistakes, [Earth] needs us. This may seem an odd statement after all that I have said about the way 20th century humans became almost a planetary disease organism. But it has taken [Earth] 2.5 billion years to evolve an animal that can think and communicate its thoughts. If we become extinct she has little chance of evolving another. — James Lovelock

Life Lessons by James Lovelock

1. James Lovelock taught us the importance of being open to new ideas and approaches to problem solving, as well as the need to think holistically about the environment.
2. He also showed us the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and the consequences they can have on the environment.
3. Lastly, Lovelock taught us the importance of being humble and open to learning from mistakes, as well as the need to be persistent and resilient in the face of adversity.