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By Root 916 0

we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are—or ought to be.” But this is a problem because “the dream of an unworked natural landscape is very much the fantasy of people who have never themselves had to work the land to make a living.”37 The only way that cities and wilderness exist as they are is because of all those other things we stick out in the Mojave. Energy, industrial, and commercial facilities are the lifestyle-support system of our country. It is in the infrastructural landscapes we’ve scratched into far-flung natures where we can see actual human society reflected.

What better symbol could there be of who we really are—or ought to be—than a field of mirrors harnessing the sun to make huge amounts of electricity in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a fence to keep out desert tortoises who have had their homes moved to a carefully constructed new location as if they were very high-paid executives switching jobs? That’s living with our world—and it’s what a naturalized, if not natural, energy system looks like, the kind humans could live with for a very long time.

Green technology gives environmentalism the material means to build a better civilization as well as the political potency and clarity of purpose that comes with the need to make new things work.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 Historic American Engineering Record, “Death Valley Ranch.”

2 Edgerton, The Shock of the Old, xvii.

3 Ibid., 8.

4 Shapiro and Varian, “The Art of Standard Wars.”

5 Campbell-Kelly, “Not Only Microsoft.”

6 Economides, “Competition and Vertical Integration.”

7 Hughes, “Technological Momentum in History.”

8 Winner, The Whale and the Reactor, 80.

PART I:

THE DREAM OF A MORE PERFECT POWER

CHAPTER 1

1 “John Doerr Sees Salvation and Profit in Greentech.”

2 Kedrosky, “John Doerr’s Tears.”

3 Smil, “Moore’s Curse.”

4 LaMonica, “Green-tech Venture Investing.”

5 Garber, “John Doerr.”

6 “Bill Gates on Energy.”

7 Garber, “John Doerr.”

8 Senate Committee on Public Works, The Impact of Growth on the Environment.

9 Thiele, Environmentalism for a New Millennium, 55.

10 Stoll, The Great Delusion.

CHAPTER 2

1 Etzler, The Paradise Within the Reach of All Men, 87.

2 Stoll, The Great Delusion, 47.

3 Noyes, History of American Socialisms.

4 Williamson, “Urban Disamenities.”

5 Steckel, “Stature and Living Standards.”

6 Brimblecombe, “London Air Pollution.”

7 Mrozowski et al., “Living on the Boott.”

8 Dickens, Oliver Twist, 29.

9 On Etzler, see Stoll, The Great Delusion, 38.

10 Noyes, History of American Socialisms, 19.

11 Stoll, The Great Delusion, 53.

CHAPTER 3

1 A. MacDonald, “Lowell,” 37.

2 Nye, American Technological Sublime, 39.

3 Mackay, The Western World, 282.

4 Vigne, Six Months in America, 236.

5 Whittier, “The Stranger in Lowell.”

6 Dalzell, Enterprising Elite.

7 Nye, American Technological Sublime.

8 Dalzell, Enterprising Elite.

9 “Editorial: Letter IX,” 449.

10 Case, “Notes from a Journal,” 181.

11 “Editorial: Letter IX,” 449.

12 Lyford, The Western Address Directory, 37.

13 Montrie, “‘I Think Less of the Factory’,” 284.

14 Wyman, “Practical Treatise on Ventilation,” 132.

15 Ibid., 133.

16 Lyford, The Western Address Directory, 88.

17 Crockett, An Account of Col. Crockett’s Tour, 95.

18 Brierley, Ab-o’th’-Yate in Yankeeland.

CHAPTER 4

1 Steinberg, Nature Incorporated.

2 Cumbler, “Review of Nature Incorporated,” 626.

3 Steinberg, Nature Incorporated, 69–76.

4 Ibid., 49, 79–80, 167–97.

5 Hunter, Waterpower.

6 Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 40.

7 Malone, Waterpower in Lowell.

8 Steinberg, Nature Incorporated.

9 Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 44.

10 Thoreau, “Paradise (to Be) Regained,” 452.

11 Linstromberg and Ballowe, “Thoreau and Etzler,” 25.

12 Thoreau, “Paradise (to Be) Regained,” 459.

13 Ibid., 460.

14 Stoller, “A Note on Thoreau’s Place,” 173.

15 Miller-Rushing, “Global Warming and Flowering Times”; Willis, et al., “Phylogenetic Patterns of Species Loss.”

16 Willis, et al.,