James Lovelock Quotes

Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.

Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill.

As a global community, we have to start thinking more seriously about whether there are limits to what our earth can bear and if we're willing to cope with the struggle for limited resources, which only seem to increase as our population does.

With an estimated population of nine billion people by 2050, we cannot continue to consume resources at the same rate and maintain our quality of life.

Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit?

I do not believe you can have infinite population or economic growth in a finite world. We are living on the shoulders of some awesome geometric curves.

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

When I was born, the world's population was 3.5 billion. There are now 6.8 billion people on the planet. By 2050, that's expected to rise to 9.4 billion. What's more, the Earth's resources aren't growing; they're decreasing - and rapidly.

Most of us feel some kind of uncertainty, with the population increasing and resources decreasing. We have to face these issues.

There are probably already too many people on the planet.

The bigger question is how does a rogue species called humans - whose population just blew through the seven billion mark on it's way to nine billion members - manage to survive the next century on a planet with finite resources, without destroying its delicate balance in the process.

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

People who are not addressing the issues of population control are not seriously addressing the environment.

The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources.... By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Population needs to be stabilised for sustainable development.

It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity; how many planets will a country like India require?

The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.

We're adding a billion people every decade. We're just spin doctors. Whatever we do is supposedly great, and yet it's always at the expense of diversity and nature. We're like elephants. The ecology of the elephant is more similar to human than any other.

Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.

Life and families and babies are all joyous gifts. But if we do not begin to truly account for our numbers, we will surely create an ecological crisis that will only lead to anguish and despair.

The human world is a long way from meeting the needs of the present, and it is borrowing massively from the future - not only by piling up money debt, but also by degrading the resources from which all real wealth ultimately comes.

We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology.

The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.

The destruction of our environment and resources cannot be stemmed unless the growth of the world's population is stemmed and ultimately reduced.