This book could not have been written without a lot of help. I am deeply grateful to the many people who shared with me their expertise, their experiences, and their time.
For help understanding how Asian carp got to the United States and where they’re going, I’d like to thank Margaret Frisbie, Mike Alber, and the Friends of the Chicago River, who took me on a wonderful adventure on City Living. I also want to thank Chuck Shea, Kevin Irons, Philippe Parola, Clint Carter, Duane Chapman, Robin Calfee, Anita Kelly, Drew Mitchell, and Mike Freeze. Thanks, too, to Tracy Seidemann and the Illinois DNR biologists and contract fishermen who put up with me and my endless questions.
Owen Bordelon kindly (and expertly) flew me over Plaquemines Parish, and David Muth and Jacques Hebert helped make that happen. Clint Willson, Rudy Simoneaux, Brad Barth, Alex Kolker, Boyo Billiot, Chantel Comardelle, Jeff Hebert, Joe Harvey, and Chuck Perrodin were all great guides to the complexities of life along the Mississippi.
The people working to keep the desert fishes of the United States alive deserve a special kind of gratitude. Thanks to Kevin Wilson, Jenny Gumm, Olin Feuerbacher, Ambre Chaudoin, Jeff Goldstein, and Brandon Senger, who took me pupfish-counting at Devils Hole. Thanks, too, to Kevin Guadalupe, who showed me Nevada’s poolfish and without whom there might not have been any to show, and to Susan Sorrells, who has worked so hard to keep the Shoshone pupfish alive. I am grateful, too, to Kevin Brown, who shared with me his report on the history of Devils Hole.
Ruth Gates passed away when I was midway through this book. I feel very fortunate to have been able to spend time with her on Moku o Lo‘e and for her help when I was just beginning to conceive of this project. I am also extremely grateful to Madeleine van Oppen and to all of the other dedicated marine scientists I met when I was in Australia, including Kate Quigley, David Wachenfeld, Annie Lamb, Patrick Buerger, and Wing Chan. Thanks, too, to Paul Hardisty and Marie Roman.
Mark Tizard and Caitlin Cooper were incredibly generous to me when I visited them in Geelong. Paul Thomas was equally so when I went to visit him in Adelaide. Genetic engineering is an immensely complicated topic, and I thank all three of them for so patiently explaining their work to me. Lin Schwarzkopf very kindly took me toad hunting. Thanks to Royden Saah at GBIRd, and many thanks to Luana Maroja, at Williams College, who generously helped me with the finer points of gene drive.
I was very lucky to visit the Hellisheiði Power Station with Edda Aradóttir despite the restrictions imposed by COVID. Thanks to her and also to Ólöf Baldursdóttir for making that happen. Klaus Lackner was a wonderful host when I met with him at ASU. Jan Wurzbacher, Louise Charles, and Paul Ruser were generous with their time when I visited Zurich. Gratitude to Oliver Geden, Zeke Hausfather, and Magnús Bernhardsson.
I went to talk to Frank Keutsch, David Keith, and Dan Schrag at Harvard just a few days before the entire campus shut down due to COVID. I want to thank them all for taking the time to walk me through the many complexities—both technical and ethical—of solar geoengineering. Thanks to Allison Macfarlane, who, in a very real sense, walked onto these pages, and also to Lizzie Burns, Zhen Dai, Sir David King, Andy Parker, Gernot Wagner, Janos Pasztor, and Cynthia Scharf.
In a roundabout sort of way, this book owes its origins to the visit I paid to North GRIP when it still existed. Thanks to J. P. Steffensen, Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Richard Alley, and the many intrepid glaciologists who are working to understand the past and the future of the Greenland ice sheet. Thanks, too, to Ned Kleiner, my favorite climate scientist, who read and commented on key chapters, and to Aaron and Matthew Kleiner, who offered crucial last-minute advice.
I am grateful to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for its generous assistance. A grant from the foundation supported research and travel for this book and allowed me to report from places I otherwise might not have been able to go. In 2019, I spent a month working on this project at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. The setting was amazing and the company inspiring. Parts of this book were also written while I was a fellow at the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies. A shout-out to the students and faculty at CES. A special thanks to Walton Ford, whose great auk provided inspiration in dark times.
Many people worked under a tight deadline to turn the manuscript I submitted into a book. Heartfelt thanks to Caroline Wray, Simon Sullivan, Evan Camfield, Kathy Lord, Janice Ackerman, Alicia Cheng, Sarah Gephart, Ian Keliher, and the team at MGMT Design. I am indebted to Julie Tate, who fact-checked several of these chapters, and to the fact-checking team at The New Yorker. Any errors that remain are entirely my own.
Sections of this book first appeared in The New Yorker. I am profoundly grateful to David Remnick, Dorothy Wickenden, John Bennet, and Henry Finder for their counsel and support over lo these many years.
Gillian Blake never lost faith in this project despite the complexities that arose along the way. I can’t thank her enough for her encouragement, her editorial advice, and her good judgment. Kathy Robbins was, as always, a great friend. An author could not ask for a more discerning reader or a more stalwart advocate.
Finally, I want to thank my husband, John Kleiner. To borrow from Darwin, this book came half out of his brain, and I’m not sure how to acknowledge this sufficiently “without saying so in so many words.” Not a single page of this would have been written without his insight, his enthusiasm, and his willingness to read yet another draft.