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Boris Johnson: see Boris Johnson, “We’ve Lost Our Fear of Hellfire, but Put Climate Change in Its Place,” The Telegraph, February 2, 2006. / 170 “Rendered nearly lifeless”: see Peter Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton University Press, 2009); and Drake Bennett, “Dark Green: A Scientist Argues That the Natural World Isn’t Benevolent and Sustaining: It’s Bent on Self-Destruction,” The Boston Globe, January 11, 2009. / 170–171 Human activity and carbon emissions: see Kenneth Chang, “Satellite Will Track Carbon Dioxide,” The New York Times, February 22, 2009; read more about NASA’s view of carbon dioxide at http:/oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science/.

THE NEGATIVE EXTERNALITIES OF COAL MINING: For American coal worker deaths, see the U.S. Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, “Coal Fatalities for 1900 Through 2008” and Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future (Houghton Mifflin, 2007). Deaths from black lung were gleaned from National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reports. Chinese coal worker deaths were reported by the Chinese government to be 4,746 in 2006, 3,786 in 2007, and 3,215 in 2008; these numbers are likely underestimates. See “China Sees Coal Mine Deaths Fall, but Outlook Grim,” Reuters, January 11, 2007; and “Correction: 3,215 Coal Mining Deaths in 2008,” China.org.cn, February 9, 2009.

LOJACK: See Ian Ayres and Steven D. Levitt, “Measuring Positive Externalities from Unobservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical Analysis of LoJack,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, no. 8 (February 1998).

APPLE TREES AND HONEY BEES: See J. E. Meade, “External Economies and Diseconomies in a Competitive Situation,” Economic Journal 62, no. 245 (March 1952); and Steven N. S. Cheung, “The Fable of the Bees: An Economic Investigation,” Journal of Law and Economics 16, no. 1 (April 1973). Cheung, in his paper, writes a remarkable sentence: “Facts, like jade, are not only costly to obtain but also difficult to authenticate.” For a very strange twist on this insight, see Stephen J. Dubner, “Not as Authentic as It Seems,” Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, March 23, 2009.

MOUNT PINATUBO: For one dramatic telling of the eruption, see Barbara Decker, Volcanoes (Macmillan, 2005). For its effect on global climate, see: Richard Kerr, “Pinatubo Global Cooling on Target,” Science, January 1993; P. Minnis et al., “Radiative Climate Forcing by the Mount Pinatubo Eruption,” Science, March 1993; Gregg J. S. Bluth et al., “Stratospheric Loading of Sulfur from Explosive Volcanic Eruptions,” Journal of Geology, 1997; Brian J. Soden et al., “Global Cooling After the Eruption of Mount Pinatubo: A Test of Climate Feedback by Water Vapor,” Science, April 2002; and T.M.L. Wigley, “A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization,” Science, October 2006.

INTELLECTUAL VENTURES AND GEOENGINEERING: This section is primarily drawn from a visit we made to the Intellectual Ventures lab in Bellevue, Washington, in early 2008, and from subsequent interviews and correspondence with Nathan Myhrvold, Ken Caldeira, Lowell Wood, John Latham, Bill Gates, Rod Hyde, Neal Stephenson, Pablos Holman, and others. During our visit to IV, several other people contributed to the conversation, including Shelby Barnes, Wayt Gibbs, John Gilleand, Jordin Kare, Casey Tegreene, and Chuck Witmer…. Conor and Cameron Myhrvold, Nathan’s college-age sons, also participated. They have already stepped into the invention racket themselves with a “wearable/ portable protection system for a body,” or a human air bag. From the patent application: “In an embodiment, system 100 may be worn by a locomotion-challenged person to cushion against prospective falls or collisions with environmental objects. In another embodiment, system 100 may be worn by athletes in lieu of traditional body-padding, helmets, and/or guards. In another embodiment, system 100 may be worn by people riding bicycles, skate-boarding, skating, skiing, snow-boarding, sledding and/or while