Books of the Times | 'State of Fear': Beware! Tree-Huggers Plot Evil to Save
World
December 13, 2004
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The odious villains in Michael Crichton's new thriller, the
folks (as President Bush might put it) who kill, maim and
terrorize, aren't members of Al Qaeda or any other jihadi
movement. They aren't Bondian bad guys like Goldfinger, Dr.
No or Scaramanga. They aren't drug lords or gang members or
associates of Tony Soprano.
No, the evil ones in "State of Fear" are tree-hugging
environmentalists, believers in global warming, proponents
of the Kyoto Protocol. Their surveillance operatives drive
politically correct, hybrid Priuses; their hit men use an
exotic, poisonous Australian octopus as their weapon of
choice. Their unwitting (and sometimes, witting) allies are
- natch! - the liberal media, trial lawyers, Hollywood
celebrities, mainstream environmental groups (like the
Sierra Club and the Audubon Society) and other blue-state
apparatchiks.
This might all be very amusing as a "Saturday Night Live"
sketch, but Mr. Crichton doesn't seem to have amusement on
his mind. This thriller comes equipped with footnotes,
charts, an authorial manifesto and two appendixes ("Why
Politicized Science Is Dangerous" and "Sources of Data for
Graphs").
The novel itself reads like a shrill, preposterous
right-wing answer to this year's shrill, preposterous but
campily entertaining global warming disaster movie "The Day
After Tomorrow." In that special effects extravaganza,
global warming (its dangers ignored by a Dick Cheneyesque
vice president) is the enemy, leading to deadly climate
changes and disturbances in the weather that leave New York
flooded and frozen, and Los Angeles beset by swarms of
killer tornadoes.
In Mr. Crichton's ham-handed novel, the dangers of global
warming are nothing but a lot of hype: scare scenarios,
promoted by shameless environmentalists eager to use bad
science to raise money and draw attention to their cause.
For that matter, the ludicrous plot revolves around efforts
by radical members of an environmental group called NERF
(National Environmental Resource Fund) to surreptitiously
trigger a series of natural disasters including a supersize
hurricane and a giant tsunami that would hit California
with 60-foot waves; these disasters would be timed to
coincide with the group's big media conference, thereby
awakening the public to the dangers of climate change
wrought by global warming.
As in earlier Crichton books, the characters in this novel
practically come with Post-it notes on their foreheads
indicating whether they are good guys or bad guys. The
radical leaders of the environmentalists - including the
head of NERF, Nicholas Drake, an ascetic Ralph Nader type -
are ruthless control freaks (in another novel, they might
well have been greedy corporate tycoons or power-mad
politicians). Their followers are a bunch of self-righteous
bubble-headed Gulfstream liberals, Hollywood types who
drive sport utility vehicles while preaching the virtues of
gasoline conservation. One tree-hugger, who will meet a
particularly horrifying fate, shares the résumé of the
real-life actor and activist Martin Sheen: he is best known
for having played the president of the United States in a
once-popular television show.
As for Mr. Crichton's good guys - the people trying to
thwart the nefarious NERF plot to wreak natural destruction
in the name of saving the planet - they are led by a brainy
former M.I.T. professor named John Kenner, who, it's
suggested, knows everything about everything. Kenner is
accompanied on his global peregrinations by a "Jurassic
Park"-like crew of handsome young people, who prove adept
at surviving all manner of perils, from frostbite in
Antarctica to death by multiple lightning strikes to
captivity by cannibals in the South Pacific. People say
standard-issue thriller things like "Time is short, Sarah.
Very short." That is, when they aren't dropping scientific
terms like "cavitation units" and "propagation time."
One subplot in "State of Fear" involves the disappearance
or death of a wealthy contributor to NERF; another, a
proposed lawsuit against the Environmental Protection
Agency to be filed by a small Pacific island nation. Half
movie treatment, half ideological screed, "State of Fear"
careers between action set pieces (the requisite car
chases, shootouts and narrow escapes from grisly ends) and
talky disquisitions full of technical language and
cherry-picked facts meant to hammer home the author's
points. And Mr. Crichton does indeed have a message, as an
afterword titled "Author's Message" attests. Among his
stated beliefs: "I suspect the people of 2100 will be much
richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller
global population and enjoy more wilderness than we have
today. I don't think we have to worry about them." And: "I
blame environmental organizations every bit as much as
developers and strip miners" for current failures in
wilderness management.
In an appendix, he goes on to draw parallels between global
warming theories and the notorious theory of eugenics
floated a century ago: "I am not arguing that global
warming is the same as eugenics. But the similarities are
not superficial. And I do claim that open and frank
discussion of the data, and of the issues, is being
suppressed."Given these dogmatic assertions and his
lumbering efforts to make the novel's story line illustrate
these theories, it seems disingenuous in the extreme of Mr.
Crichton to claim: "Everybody has an agenda. Except me." Of
course, he could simply be trying (like some of the
characters in the novel) to drum up publicity for himself
by being provocative and contrarian.
After all, it's hard to imagine people buying this sorry
excuse for a thriller on its storytelling merits alone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/books/13kaku.html?ex=1104031636&ei=1&en=03f1a9763bc31293
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