Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (22 page)

Leonard, Elmore.
Get Shorty
. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Page 8.

Machiavelli, Niccolò.
The Prince
. Trans. Peter Constantine. New York: Random House, 2007.

Shakespeare, William. “The Merchant of Venice.”
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FIVE: PAYBACK

There are so many people and organizations to whom this chapter might be dedicated that it was hard to choose. So I’ll single out my instructors on the subject of traditional life in the Arctic — Aaju Peter, Bernadette Dean, and John Houston — and also Matthew Swan of Adventure Canada, who made such contacts possible. And Graeme Gibson, whose work on predators and their prey and their environments has overlapped with mine.

Belshazzar’s feast may be found in Daniel 5.

John Donne’s bell comment is in the
Devotions
, “Meditation
XVII
.”

I posit that Scrooge Nouveau’s inherited fortune would have come through Scrooge’s happy nephew, Fred, son of his dead sister, Fan — thus Scrooge’s closest relative. Scrooge Lite left a lot of his money to charity, but Fred got the business and took the surname Scrooge to preserve it in the family firm.

Scrooge Nouveau’s
CEO
, Bob Cratchit, is a descendant of the original Bob, via Tiny Tim. Not being athletic, Tim took to the books and became a proto-nerd; Scrooge Lite funded his education. The new Bob has, however, few of the virtues of the original one.

For “feeding the earth,” see Patrick Tierney’s
The Highest Altar
, previously cited.

There is much information on Solon and his debt reforms, but see for instance John Ralston Saul’s
Voltaire’s Bastards
.

There are many books on the Black Death. But see, for instance, Duncan, Christopher, and Susan Scott.
Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer
. Chichester: Wiley, 2004. And also Kelly, John.
The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time.
Toronto: HarperCollins, 2005.

The Blake quotation is from the poem “The Human Abstract.”

The sixty-three-year-old woman who put the newspaper clipping into the steamer trunk was my mother. She’d cut it out of the
Toronto
Star
, which had reprinted it from the
Los Angeles Times
. The person who found it and read it much later — in 2008 — was me.

For the Spirit of Earth Day Present’s coffee choice, see Bridget Stutchbury,
The Silence of the Songbirds.

There is a great deal of material on the destruction of the ocean. See, for instance, Jones, Deborah. “In a Few Decades, There Will Be No Fish.”
globeandmail.com
. 2005.
Globe and Mail
. 21 May 2008. <
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/
document/v5/content/
>.

For good fish choices, consult
www.seafoodwatch.org
. For how to help, see
www.Oceana.org
.

The statistic on the oxygen production of trees comes from
www.torontoparksandtrees.org
.

For the beneficial effects of organic soil on carbon dioxide, see Beck, Malcolm.
The Secret Life of Compost
. Metairie, Louisiana: Acres, 1997. See also
www.FarmForward.com
.

For birds killed by lighted buildings and for what you can do to help, see, for instance,
FLAP
, at
www.flap.org
. There are many other organizations working on this, and on the bird/windfarm interaction. If you are a city official or a corporate high-rise renter, why not turn off the lights, save some carbons, and stop murdering migrating birds at the same time? How hard is that, actually?

To help save the albatross from extinction, go to the BirdLife International website at
www.birdlife.org
, find the BirdLife partner organization in your own country, and contribute to it.

For helping to save the migratory songbirds, see not only BirdLife International, but also the American Bird Conservancy, at
www.abcbirds.org
.

The Grameen Bank is just one example of microfinancing.

For hyperinflation moments, see, for instance, Buchan, James.
Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money
. New York: Welcome Rain, 2001.

For the relentless destructiveness of certain kinds of technologies, see Juenger, Friedrich George.
The Failure of Technology: Perfection Without Purpose
. Hinsdale, Illinois: Henry Regnery, 1949.

Scrooge’s bad future might prove to be even worse. For a prophet of the tipping point, see James Lovelock’s
The Revenge of Gaia
. London: Allen Lane, 2006.

For examples of earlier and more inclusive attitudes toward animals, read the story of Noah, carefully; see the life of Buddha; consult Hinduism and vegetarianism; and see too the charming Muslim fable
The Animals’ Lawsuit Against Humanity
, as well as the strictures against the abuse of animals in the Koran. I thank Dr. Tazim Kassan of Syracuse University for bringing these last to my attention.

Some of the ingested biofuel that kept this author at the keyboard came from fair-trade, organic, shade-grown chocolate bars, the only kind that are bird-friendly.

Carbon-neutral electric energy was supplied by Bullfrog Power at
www.bullfrogpower.com
.

It is worth mentioning that a ridiculously low 1.5 percent of all charitable giving goes to non-human Nature, excluding pets. That statistic can be changed by you.

A sum equalling the author’s net profit from the Canadian advance for this book has been donated to BirdLife International, through its partner, Nature Canada.

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