Mark Lynas Quotes

At 1.24 am on 26 April 1986 Chernobyl’s Unit 4 reactor exploded after staff disabled safety systems and performed an ill-advised experiment to check – ironically enough – the reactor’s safety.

The worst case scenario sees the Amazon rainforest burning, huge amounts of methane being released by Siberian peat bogs and so on - by the time today's six year olds are 60, such a scenario would see global warming already out of control.

Unless we decide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within just a few years from now, our destinies will already be chosen and our path towards hell unalterable as the carbon cycle feedbacks... kick in one after another.

We no longer need to discuss whether or not it is safe – over a decade and a half with three trillion GM meals eaten there has never been a single substantiated case of harm. You are more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to get hurt by GM food.

We humans, one species of animal amongst millions, have now become the de facto guardians of the planet's climate stability.

If we are to save humanity and the planet from the worst mass extinction of all time, worse even than that at the end of the Permian, we must stop at two degrees.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that climate change means we'll have to sacrifice our creature comforts. But it doesn't have to be that way.

This is like playing Russian roulette with a Luger rather than a revolver. One bullet, one chamber - and we're pulling the trigger.

I wonder what sentences judges might hand down at future international criminal tribunals on those who will be partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths from starvation, famine, and disease in the decades ahead.

Only by advocating 'politically unrealistic' CO2 concentrations can runaway global warming be avoided. But what is politically realistic for humans is whollymunrelated to what is physically realistic for the planet.

Once the 'portals of the future close - in Amazonia, Siberia or the Arctic - we will find ourselves powerless to affect the outcome of this dreadful tale.

Conventional economic theory... counts the depletion of resources as the accumulation of wealth.

Silent Summer - a never-ending heat wave, devoid of birdsong, insect hum, and all the weird and wonderful living noises that subconsciously keep us company.

Human releases of carbon dioxide are almost certainly happening faster than any natural carbon release since the beginning of life on Earth.

I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

An outdated view still prevails that a low-carbon lifestyle requires immense personal suffering and sacrifice. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. All the evidence shows that people who do not drive, do not fly on planes, do shop locally, do grow their own food, and do get to know other members of their community have a much higher quality of life than their compatriots who still persist in making the ultimate sacrifice of wasting their lives commuting to work in cars.

Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats which can be postponed until later.

I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

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.