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.”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“I particularly dislike the high-profile switch-off campaigns where whole cities are plunged into darkness for an hour as a supposedly symbolic gesture about energy use. So is the implication that we all need to live in constant gloom to reduce CO2 emissions?”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“First, guilt-tripping doesn’t work as a campaigning strategy. If you make people feel bad about what they do, you must give them a realistic and feasible alternative. Second, pragmatism beats purism. Every time.”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“Everywhere I went in Africa it was the same story. Foreign-funded NGOs, supported mainly by donors in Europe, were delaying or blocking the development not just of biotechnology but of modern agriculture generally across the continent.”
― Mark Lynas, Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

“We cannot criticise global warming sceptics for denying the scientific consensus on climate when we ignore the same consensus on both the safety and the beneficial uses of nuclear power and genetic engineering.”
― Mark Lynas, Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

“It would be easy to laugh this off were it not so obviously counterproductive. The idea that tackling climate change means accepting profound levels of intrusion into our everyday lives – and the economic disaster of dramatic drops in consumption and living standards – is an illusion that is actually shared by the Green left and the libertarian right.”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“Pessimists sometimes gloomily ask me whether they should still have children, or whether the future is now so bad that they must remain childless and lonely. My response is unequivocal: of course you should have children! Bear children, love them, and then fight for their future with every fibre of your being. To my mind merchants of doom are no better than merchants of doubt. By all means grieve for what is lost, but focus that emotional pain into determination, resolution and renewed hope. Never despair, because there will always be someone whose life it is not yet too late to save. That person might even be your child.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

“There is no doubt that new designs available today are dramatically safer than those of the past, and that the potential for severe accidents in future vastly reduced.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“Modern Humans have at least dealt out death fairly: We began our existence by killing each other.”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“In other words, not only have there been no fatalities resulting from Fukushima, but there have been no radiation-related injuries or medically-identifiable health effects either.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“For a brief review of our history to date shows us in a very singular role:that of serial killers.”
― Mark Lynas, The God Species

“We'd do better-if it were possible-just to eat the oil directly. For example, it takes 127 calories of fuel to fly in each calorie of iceberg lettuce from the United States to the UK. According to one estimate, the US food system consumes ten times more fossil energy than it produces in food energy. With”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“Coal-fired power stations in fact release far more radiation into the environment than nuclear power stations, due to trace radionuclides being concentrated into coal ash and blown away in dust and smoke.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“The Keeling Curve is a useful reality check, one that cuts through all the noise and confusion of the climate and energy debates. Unlike the slopes of the huge volcano on which it is measured, the initially gentle upward curve gets steeper the higher you go. That means that the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is steadily increasing, from roughly 1 ppm in the early years to about 2 ppm annually today. There is no visible slowdown, no sudden downwards blip, to mark the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, still less 2009’s Copenhagen ‘two degrees’ commitment or the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015. All those smiling heads of state shaking hands, the diplomats hugging on the podium after marathon sessions of all-night negotiating – none of that actually made any identifiable difference to the Keeling Curve, which is the only thing that actually matters to the planet’s temperature. All our solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, lithium-ion batteries, LED lightbulbs, nuclear plants, biogas digesters, press conferences, declarations, pieces of paper; all our shouting and arguing, weeping and marching, reporting and ignoring, decrying and denying; all our speeches, movies, websites, lectures and books; our announcements, carbon-neutral targets, moments of joy and despair; none of these to date have so much as made the slightest dent in the steepening upward slope of the Keeling Curve.”
― Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

“One of the biggest concerns regarding corporate control in the GMO debate is the widely held notion that Monsanto’s genetically engineered seeds do not reproduce – that they are intentionally sterile, and that this forces farmers to return year after year to purchase seeds from the same company. Dubbed ‘Terminator technology’, this is often given as a reason why genetic engineering is necessarily bad for farmers, and why private corporations seem so determined to push it. There is indeed something intuitively offensive about the idea of sterile seeds, that biological reproduction itself could be genetically switched off through human technological manipulation, all for corporate profit. It is just as well then, perhaps, that seed sterility as a trait – though it was proposed and partially developed in the 1990s – was never actually deployed anywhere in the world. So the much-vaunted ‘Terminator technology’ does not actually exist. The story that Monsanto’s seeds don’t reproduce is really a myth.”
― Mark Lynas, Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

“As James Lovelock writes, ‘Mother Earth’ is now an old lady in her sixties, no longer as resilient as she once was. With our conscious actions, we are now measurably shortening her lifespan.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“even if all fossil fuel runs out (or we decide to leave it in the ground so as not to fry the planet), there is no conceivable shortage of nuclear fuel to burn in fast reactors.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“Eco-romantics may fantasise about the pre-fossil fuels economy of the past, but the reality of pre-industrial agrarian society really was slavery, war, famine, disease and a short average lifespan for everyone except a very privileged aristocratic few.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“In terms of our energy mix, therefore, and despite tablet computers, synthetic biology and Twitter, we are really only mid-way through the Industrial Revolution.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“My bet is that had Bt corn been Monsanto’s initial product launch instead of Roundup Ready soy, things might have been very different for GMOs. Genetic engineering could have been associated in the public mind from the outset with the reduction of chemical pesticides and might therefore have faced less widespread opposition. Some environmental groups might even have cautiously supported GMOs as part of their long-running campaigns to reduce pesticides in agriculture. Bt crops might even have been adopted by organic farmers as a more efficient way to deliver a biopesticide that they had already been relying on for many years. Instead, mostly because of the ‘original sin’ of Roundup Ready, Monsanto found itself embroiled in a succession of controversies that have today made the company a byword for chemical-dependent ‘Big Ag’.”
― Mark Lynas, Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

“The history of the anti-nuclear movement is therefore not lit by sunshine, but shrouded in coal smoke.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“Either way, nuclear power is the only means by which we can generate prodigious amounts of energy with only a tiny human footprint on the planetary biosphere.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“A new world With five degrees of global warming, an entirely new planet is coming into being-one largely unrecognisable from the Earth we know today. The”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

“Even if you built your house right at the perimeter fence of your local nuclear plant, you would still receive many times less additional radiation than an airline crew member would consider entirely normal, for example.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“But just as they were spectacularly successful in stopping the growth of nuclear power, they were spectacularly unsuccessful in promoting the use of solar as an alternative”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“It is ironic but nonetheless true that for developing countries the best way to protect against the future effects of climate change is currently to burn more fossil fuels and thereby accelerate their economic development.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“With an Apollo Program scale-up of nuclear and other low-carbon power sources we still – just about – have time to avoid the worst of global warming.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“Let’s be clear about the real-world impact of this activism however. Aubergine farmers in both India and the Philippines have sprayed millions of pounds of additional insecticides thanks to the activities of Greenpeace, Vandana Shiva and other anti-GMO campaigners and groups in denying them the opportunity to grow Bt brinjal.”
― Mark Lynas, Seeds of Science: Why We Got It So Wrong On GMOs

“This means that not only can fast reactors – deployed at scale – “solve” the nuclear waste “problem”, but that they can also run entire countries for centuries on uranium which has already been mined and for which there is little other use.”
― Mark Lynas, Nuclear 2.0: Why A Green Future Needs Nuclear Power

“Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the ‘peak oil’ point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit.”
― Mark Lynas, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet