James Lovelock - Humans Quotes

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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

I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change... The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.

James Lovelock

Bacteria... have been here for three and a half billion years, and without them we have no chance whatsoever of survival. Humans are something very recent, like the froth on top of a glass of beer.

James Lovelock

We have had a moon's-eye view of our home in space as it orbits the sun, and we are suddenly aware of being citizens of no mean planet, however mean and squalid the human contribution to this panorama may be in close-up.... We are... a living part of a strange and beautiful anomaly in our solar system.

James Lovelock

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

James Lovelock