Interview: James Lovelock on Climate Change

FS: Could renewable energy be the solution?

Hydroelectricity plant in Buskerud, Norway.

JL: I think that the so-called alternative energy schemes like wind and solar power are pretty inefficient and impractical. They are no solution to our problems at the moment, and I think they are dreamt up by urban people who want to do something natural.

There are some natural power sources, like hydroelectricity, that are excellent. Norway largely runs on hydroelectricity, but the sad thing is, we’ve used about all we can, there isn’t any left to spare. One day, we might be able to get energy from tidal sources and I do wish the British government had the sense to build the Severn barrage, a power scheme across the estuary of the River Severn in western Britain that would provide the output of four major nuclear power stations. There were too many arguments about doing it and I’m afraid the Greens were the main objectors: they thought it would upset a wild fowl habitat somewhere, so it wasn’t done.

FS: Do you think that we will ever be able to control our climate?

JL: As a scientist, and one who used to read science fiction, that question really fascinates me. There are a lot of proposals up at the moment: some colleagues of mine at NASA in the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory have a very reasonable scheme for putting up sunshades in space. It would be at the gravity-neutral point between the Earth and the Sun, so it wouldn’t take much effort to hold it there, and would involve a large carbon-fibred diaphragm at least ten miles in diameter. They say it would cost less than the space station and would disperse about two percent of sunlight coming in, which would relieve us of global heating. It would take a lot of time and a lot of politics to get it working, but it might happen.