A Quote by 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

Quote Topics

Arctic Breeding Century Change Climate Climate Change End Few Human Human Population Near Pairs Population Reduce Surviving Will

Quote Author

James Lovelock
English - Scientist
Born: July 26, 1919

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

It's possible that we'll screw up the climate so badly that most of us will die and a few breeding pairs will remain somewhere in the arctic. What's more likely is that we'll continue remaking the planet, driving many species to extinction, killing millions of people through the indirect effects of climate change, making life even harder for the poor and powerless than it is now, and making it a little more difficult for the global middle class to live the lives to which they have become accustomed - in other words, business as usual, only worse.

Dale Jamieson

City farming is not only possible, it is the very definition of the kind of meaningful, sustainable innovation we will need to meet the grand challenges of the 21st century: climate change; population growth; ageing population; urbanization; rising demand for energy, food and water; poverty; and access to healthcare.

Frans van Houten

Climate change - for so long an abstract concern for an academic few - is no longer so abstract. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Programme reports 'clear evidence of human influences on the climate system.'

Zac Goldsmith

We will pay for this [climate change] one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today and we'll have to take an enormous hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll. There is no way out of this that does not have real costs attached to it.

Anthony Zinni

The impact of climate change is relatively small. The average impact on welfare is equivalent to losing a few per cent of income. That is, the impact of a century worth of climate change is comparable to the impact of one or two years of economic growth.

Richard Tol

The Delaware Estuary has sustained a human population for thousands of years, but by the end of the 19th Century, increased population and industrialization had transformed much of the upper Estuary watershed.

Jim Gerlach

Adaptation is the only means to reduce the now-unavoidable costs of climate change over the next few decades

Nicholas Stern

Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.

Stuart L. Hart

If substantial methyl hydrate melt begins to occur in the Arctic Ocean basin, then the (carbon) accelerator will be jammed, and there will be nothing we can do to cut the speed of climate change.

Mark Lynas

There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it.

Thomas Ferguson

Climate change is not going to be prevented. It's not even going to be mitigated to the degree a rational person would want. As a result we're going to have to live with climate change and try to reduce the extent and rate of change as much as possible. This is not an inspiring or sexy project.

Dale Jamieson

Some global hazards are insidious. They stem from pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. And they will be aggravated as the population rises to a projected nine billion by mid-century, and by the effects of climate change. An 'ecological shock' could irreversibly degrade our environment.

Martin Rees

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

Climate change is the greatest threat to human rights in the 21st century.