I can imagine a radical environmentalist trying to relax on an ocean cruise and making the mistake of picking up a copy of Michael Crichton's new novel, A State of Fear. I suspect the next thing that would happen is the book being hurled into the ocean.
Not because the thesis of the book is false, but because it's true. Not that environmentalists are interested in the truth. They're interested in their version of the truth, of course, but that truth is getting rid of about three-quarters of the human race, since they consider the current number of people
an obscenity.
I find their beliefs rather scary, because they want to sacrifice people to Gaia the same way people in the past sacrificed infants to Moloch. Otherwise, Gaia will get us, just the way people thought Moloch was going to get them.
Such sacrificers-to-Gaia ignore the fact, as P.J. O'Rourke has pointed out, that you can take the entire population of the world and put it into an area the size of the former Yugoslavia. It'd be crowded, of course, but no more than any big city.
To their end of offing people, environmentalists will latch onto any theory, no matter how lacking in evidence, in order to prove that most of humanity needs to die. A few decades ago it was global cooling (remember that?); now it's global warming. Both are just excuses to try to bump people off. As long as it's not them, it goes without saying.
Crichton takes on the current bogeyman of global warming in his new novel. The environmentalist crowd is really gonna hate this book. Crichton points out, quite correctly, that modern-day environmentalism is a quasi-religion--a cult, in my view--which is why it's immune to the facts.
I'll be the first to admit this is not a great book (it's a bit on the didactic side), but it did make me chuckle. The head radical environmentalist is one Nick Drake, who, outraged the funding for his group is going to be cut (because their "science" has been debunked), decides to murder his "enemies," all the while trying to whip up some public hysteria about global warming.
I don't know about you, but I found that funny. After all, it is what environmentalists want to to do--murder people. When they were able to ban DDT (rather innocuous, as pesticides go), malaria started to run rampant throughout the Third World, doing in a lot of people, including children and infants. Is there a peep about this from radical environmentalists? Nary a one. There never will be, either.
There's a lot of scientific information in this book, but it's wrapped in a James Bond-type adventure story. Actually it's more like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Maybe you can call it an "action/information" novel, which is Crichton's trademark. Whatever you call it, I found it a page-turner, one that made me wonder, "I wonder what's going to happen next?"
In a sense, Crichton has reversed his direction here. In novels like Jurassic Park he took the Frankenstein theme and wrote about what might happen when Man Messes With The Wrong Things. In A State of Fear, it's about When Cultists Pretend They Are Scientists. It's also about How We Should Laugh at Them Because They're Loons.
Perhaps this book will have more of an influence on the general public that legitimate scientists, who tend to be too technical. I hope so. As things look now, I think it's going to be a best-seller.
Unfortunately, Crichton wraps things up too quickly in this book. You can't have everything, I guess. Still, it is a techno-thriller that is certainly worth reading, and it definitely gives a smack to those who need a smack.
Posted by Bob Wallace, WHO THINKS THE ENVIRON-NUTS WANT TO BUMP OFF MOST OF THE WORLD.
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