OpenSpace4Life

    "Believe it or not, nuclear reactors have existed since long before man, and a fossil natural nuclear reactor was recently discovered in Gabon, in Africa. . . . Thus life probably began under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those which trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. . . . The present dangers are real but tend to be exaggerated. These rays are part of the natural environment and always have been."

    "Towards the end of 1975 the United States National Academy of Sciences issued a report by . . . those expert in the effects of nuclear explosions and all things subsequent to them. The report suggested that if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000 megatons, were used in nuclear war the effects on most of the human and man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems would be minimally disturbed.
    "To date, there seems to be only one serious scientific criticism of the report, namely, of the claim that the major global effect would be the partial destruction of the ozone layer by oxides of nitrogen generated in the heat of the nuclear explosions. We now suspect that this claim is false . . . There was, of course, at the time of the report a strange and disproportionate concern in America about stratospheric ozone. It might in the end prove to be prescient, but then as now it was a speculation based on very tenuous evidence."

    "So strongly expressed, however, has been public concern over the dangers of genetic manipulation involving DNA itself, that it was good to have no less an authority than John Postgate* confirm that . . . there must be many taboos written into the genetic coding, the universal language shared by every living cell. There must also be an intricate security system to ensure that exotic outlaw species do not evolve into rampantly criminal syndicates. Vast numbers of viable genetic combinations must have been tried out, through countless generations of micro-organisms, during the history of life.
    "Perhaps our continuing orderly existence over so long a period can be attributed to yet another Gaian regulatory process, which makes sure that cheats can never become dominant."

Yes, believe it or not, all of these quotes are from Gaia: A new look at life on Earth by James Lovelock, first published in 1979. In his preface to the 2000 edition he admits that he made some mistakes, but doesn't mention any of the above passages, although the theory of nuclear winter established in the early 1980s is a compelling reason to believe that full-scale nuclear war would be a global catastrophe for all land-dwelling multicellular organisms.

The preface also chides environmentalists for "attacking all science-based large companies of the First World especially where there was a link, however tenuous, with a threat to humanity," since "Our much too vociferous advocates, the consumer lobbies, and we the consumers are equally responsible for the gaseous greenhouse and the extinction of wildlife. The multinational companies would not exist if we had not demanded their products and at a price that forces them to produce without enough care for the consequences."

* The linked article is problematic in that it doesn't properly address the danger of genetically modifying plants and animals, which have much larger genomes and reproduce far more slowly than bacteria, and so experience a far lower rate of natural genetic mutations with major phenotypic effects.