SuperFreakonomics

a person using a computer experiences “cognitive drift” if more than one second elapses between clicking the mouse and seeing new data on the screen.

“Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse-gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food,” they write.

Terrorism is effective because it imposes costs on everyone, not just its direct victims. The most substantial of these indirect costs is fear of a future attack, even though such fear is grossly misplaced. The probability that an average American will die in a given year from a terrorist attack is roughly 1 in 5 million; he is 575 times more likel

The automobile, cheaper to own and operate than a horse-drawn vehicle, was proclaimed “an environmental savior.”

Rather, this is a graphic example of what economists call the principal-agent problem.

But in the cash-incentive version, the men blew away the women.

law of unintended consequences.

Not so many years ago, schoolchildren were taught that carbon dioxide is the naturally occurring lifeblood of plants, just as oxygen is ours. Today, children are more likely to think of carbon dioxide as a poison.

“The problem with solar cells is that they’re black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat—which contributes to global warming.”