James Lovelock: A man for all seasons
John Gray on James Lovelock, published in the New Statesman on 27 March 2013.
‘‘Lovelock has sometimes been portrayed as a prophet of doom. That picture has nothing in common with the man I have known for many years. Cheerful, humorous and life-affirming, he is a passionate talker – and an equally passionate walker. Last summer he moved with his wife, Sandy, to a coastguard’s cottage in Dorset and he told me that the achievement of which he is most proud is walking the 630-mile South West Coast Path with her in 1999 …’’
The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years
Published in The Independent, 16 January 2006.
Paramedic to the planet
Article by Andrew Brown, published in The Guardian, Saturday December 31, 2005.
‘‘James Lovelock revolutionised environmentalism with Gaia, but upset Greens by supporting nuclear power. As for climate change, he believes disaster is inevitable but useful … ’’
Time for a rethink
James Lovelock’s Introduction to Bruno Comby’s book Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy was also published in The Independent, 28 August 2004.
Nuclear power is the only green solution
Published in The Independent, 24 May 2004.
Great Thinkers – James Lovelock
Mary Midgley on James Lovelock, published in the New Statesman on 14 July 2003.
‘‘Lovelock is an independent scientist. Though fanatically accurate over details, he never isolates those details from a wider, more demanding vision of their background. He thinks big. Preferring, as Darwin did, to work outside the tramlines of an institution, he has supported himself since 1963 through inventions and consultancies. Reared in Quakerism, he remains, in his eighties, quiet, vigorous, amiable and intellectually explosive.’’
James Lovelock, Gaia′s grand old man
The scientist who first theorized that our planet is a biological organism, not merely a rock, discusses life on Earth and the possibilities for its future. Published on salon.com, 17 August 2000.
‘‘Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.’’