9 quotes
Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.
Life has to take charge of its environment and evolve with it.
The Man Who Named the World (1990)
Challenging the conventional wisdom is the way to make waves in science.
Life has to be a planetary phenomenon. You could no more have a partially occupied planet than you could half a cat or half a dog.
The Man Who Named the World (1990)
If there were a billion people living on the planet, we could do whatever we please. But there are nearly seven billion. At this scale, life as we know it today is not sustainable.
How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate (2010)
The climate and the chemical properties of the Earth now and throughout its history seem always to have been optimal for life. For this to have happened by chance is as unlikely as to survive unscathed a drive blindfold through rush hour traffic.
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)
We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)
In the current fashionable denigration of technology, it is easy to forget that nuclear fission is a natural process. If something as intricate as life can assemble by accident, we need not marvel at the fission reactor, a relatively simple contraption, doing likewise.
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)
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.
The Man Who Named the World (1990)