Six Degrees Quotes

“This is classic denial: no one wants to hold a mental image of themselves as bad or evil, so immoral acts are necessarily dressed up in a cloak of intellectual self-justification.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“We'd do better-if it were possible-just to eat the oil directly. For example, it takes 127 calories of fuel to fly in each calorie of iceberg lettuce from the United States to the UK. According to one estimate, the US food system consumes ten times more fossil energy than it produces in food energy. With”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“Calculated globally, human society consumes the equivalent of 400 years' worth of ancient solar energy (expressed in terms of the net primary productivity of plants during previous geological eras) each year through our use of fossil fuels.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“So far as we yet know, this is the only planet in the entire universe which has summoned forth life in all its brilliance and variety. To knowingly cut this flowering short is undoubtedly a crime, one more unspeakable even than the cruellest genocide or most destructive war. If each person is uniquely valuable, each species is surely more so. I can see no excuses for collaborating in such a crime. As the post-war Nuremberg trials established, ignorance is no defence; nor is merely following orders. To me the moral path lies not in passively accepting our destructive role, but in actively resisting such a horrendous fate. As”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“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.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“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”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the ‘peak oil’ point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“When the Earth was last four degrees warmer, there was no ice at either pole. Global warming of this magnitude would eventually leave the whole planet without ice for the first time in nearly 40 million years.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet