I know that to personalize the Earth System as Gaia, as I have often done and continue to do in this book, irritates the scientifically correct, but I am unrepentant because metaphors are more than ever needed for a widespread comprehension of the true nature of the Earth and an understanding of the lethal dangers that lie ahead.

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA.

By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.

We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. The temperature has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest.

I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.

The tropical rain forests are a telling example. Once cut down, they rarely recover. Rainfall drops, deserts spread, the climate warms.