A Rough Ride to the Future Quotes

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“almost never mentioned by the media, no one was killed by the Fukushima accident and no one has subsequently died as a result of it, unless we add in the suicides of those driven from their homes by an overzealous application of radiation safety rules.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“we inhabit a universe that is nuclear powered. All the stars draw energy from nuclear reactions;”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“in England about 60 gigawatts of electricity a year. If our only supply was from wind we might need to cover the whole of England with wind farms. This is the green satanic change I fear. And worse, were we mad enough to do it and rich enough to afford it, we would still be emitting far too much CO2 from the carbon fuel we would burn during the 75 per cent of the time the wind was not set fair for the turbines.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“To generate one gigawatt of energy a year from wind turbines requires one thousand square miles of countryside, an area equal to that of Greater London or of Dartmoor.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“the breath of 7 billion people, our pets and our livestock puts into the already overburdened atmosphere 7 billion tons of CO2 a year.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future

“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.”
― James E. Lovelock, A Rough Ride to the Future