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

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

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
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

Civilization in its present form hasn't got long.
James Lovelock

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

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

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

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

For each of our actions there are only consequences.
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

I have heard that the Saudi Arabians are paying Greenpeace to campaign against Nuclear Power. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
James Lovelock

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

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

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

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

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

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.
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