[S-C] Book: 'STATE OF FEAR' Tree-Huggers Plot Evil

[Kevin Shrieve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/13/books/13kaku.html

December 13, 2004, New York Times

BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'STATE OF FEAR'
Beware! Tree-Huggers Plot Evil to Save World

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.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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