Question: Do we have time to [reduce] carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
Lovelock: Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.
Question: What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
Lovelock: That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done.
Question: Do you still advocate nuclear power as a solution to climate change?
Lovelock: It is a way for the UK to solve its energy problems, but it is not a global cure for climate change. It is too late for emissions reduction measures.
Question: So are we doomed?
Lovelock: There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal.
Memo to self: google process for turning Greenpeace etc. to charcoal.
Question: It's a depressing outlook.
Lovelock: Not necessarily. I don't think 9 billion is better than 1 billion. I see humans as rather like the first photosynthesisers, which when they first appeared on the planet caused enormous damage by releasing oxygen - a nasty, poisonous gas.
As is CO2. What we need is a xenon atmosphere
It took a long time, but it turned out in the end to be of enormous benefit. I look on humans in much the same light. For the first time in its 3.5 billion years of existence, the planet has an intelligent, communicating species that can consider the whole system and even do things about it. They are not yet bright enough, they have still to evolve quite a way, but they could become a very positive contributor to planetary
Question: Are you looking forward to your trip into space this year?
Lovelock: Very much. I've got my camera ready!
Boggle. And what is the carbon footprint of this flight? Talk about your noxious gases!
Question: Do you have to do any special training?
Lovelock: I have to go in the centrifuge to see if I can stand the g-forces. I don't anticipate a problem because I spent a lot of my scientific life on ships out on rough oceans and I have never been even slightly seasick so I don't think I'm likely to be space sick. They gave me an expensive thorium-201 heart test and then put me on a bicycle. My heart was performing like an average 20 year old
Question: I bet your wife is nervous.
Lovelock: No, she's cheering me on. And it's not because I'm heavily insured, because I'm not.
But at least she'd be rid of the old SOB