State of Fear Gets Hotter with Global Warming

A novel that takes off from a current controversy risks being merely topical, as evanescent as the controversy itself. (Say, a novel written in the Reagan era about the brouhaha over the “Star Wars” defense system.) But if the author is lucky, the controversy will not die down; then, the novel may be called ‘enduring,’ later may come buzz about a ‘classic.’

Michael Crichton was courageous to publish State of Fear (HarperCollins, 603 pages) in 2004. Courageous, but not stupid. His novel takes off after ‘global warming’ with fearsome intelligence, the mastery of information of a trained scientist, and the sure hand of a modern inventor of the scientific-technological thriller. The bad guys are environmental terrorists; the useful idiots who enable them and finance them are the foundations executives, Hollywood stars, and legions of scientists reiterating the politically correct conclusion. The good guys are scientists-become-terrorism-fighters who see through the global warming scam and comprehend the kind of technological, media-savvy, cyber-whiz villains they are up against.

State of Fear is not merely a novel “set” amidst the global warming debate; it is an ingenious, well-oiled machine for educating and converting the reader—even the most complacent, self-righteous keeper of the flame. Through the character of Evans, the reader’s avatar in the novel, the reader is schooled step by step in the premises and arguments of the “global warming catastrophe” doctrine.

The heroes, arguably, are the individuals who begin as cookie-cutter advocates of a cause they genuinely view as beyond argument and pivotal to mankind’s fate, but have their eyes opened—almost prised open—to the truth. And then risk their lives again and again for that truth. In this sense, the reader, too, is invited to be a hero, travelling with the young lawyer Peter Evans from trust in the global warming dogma to questioning it to coming close (more than once) to dying in the battle against the terrorists who, let us say, wish to greatly accelerate the catastrophes against which they warn mankind. Catastrophes they now would inflict on a somnolent, passive mankind not panicked enough for its own good.

Predictably, Crichton’s book scored few of the rave reviews routinely granted his earlier books, starting with the smash best-seller The Andromeda Strain and including titles now household names: Terminal Man, The Congo, The Great Train Robber, and Jurassic Park.

More typical of reviews of State of Fear is a comment by journalist Chris Mooney, who described it as “pure porn for global warming deniers.” A few (very few) scientists were rounded up to state that Crichton had misrepresented their scientific paper. A few activist science organizations denounced the work.

I said earlier that to invite these inevitable dismissals Crichton had been a brave man. But not stupid, because by the time he decided to write State of Fear, Crichton was a near-legend as an author of thrillers about science and technology. The reviewers could not keep the novel from its audience—as much as they feared and hated the book. It is a lesson that new writers intent on publishing politically incorrect novels might heed. Start with a really good novel that happens to be about a topic close to the hearts of the Post-Modernist opinion makers. The perennially reliable topic is the holocaust, but there are others.

The point is that the press, some scientists, and some organizations bestirred themselves to try to discredit State of Fear. That was thanks to the huge audience Crichton had won. And because State of Fear is not merely a novel “set” amidst the global warming debate; it is an ingenious, well-oiled machine for educating and converting the reader—even the most complacent, self-righteous keeper of the flame. Through the character of Evans, the reader’s avatar in the novel, the reader is schooled step by step in the premises and arguments of the “global warming catastrophe” doctrine and what the science really tells us about the arguments. With Evans, the reader lives through the reactions of initial skepticism, doubt that the counter-arguments could be true, resentment at being challenged, and sulking anger when overcome by clear facts and arguments.

For example, a subplot of State of Fear is litigation about to be filed against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to prevent the great global carbon sinner, the United States, from contributing to the rising sea levels that threaten the 8,000 tribal inhabitants of the remote island of Vanuatu. With the support of the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF), a team of 40 lawyers, researchers, and publicists is working around the clock to prepare for the trial. Peter Evans is sent to check on progress and dragooned into a kind of focus group that begins his long interrogative education about global warming:

“‘…what is global warming as you understand it?’

“Evans concealed his surprise.  He hadn’t expected to be asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

“’We ask everyone who comes here. We are trying to get a feel for the general state of knowledge. What is global warming?’

“’Global warming is the heating up of the earth from burning fossil fuels.’

“’Actually that is not correct…. Not even close. Perhaps you’d try again.’

“Evans paused. It was obvious he was being interrogated by a fussy and precise legal mind….’Global warming is, uh, the heating up of the surface of the earth from the excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is produced by burning fossil fuels.’

“’Again, not correct.’

“’Why not?’

“’Several reasons. At a minimum, I count four errors in the statement you just made.’

“’I don’t understand,’ said Evans. ‘My statement—that is what global warming is.’’

“’In fact, it is not.’ Balder’s tone was crisp, authoritative. ‘Global warming is a theory.’

“’—hardly a theory, anymore—‘

“’No, it is a theory,’ Balder said. ‘Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. But, in fact, global warming is a theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’”

And so the education of Peter Evans, and the reader, begins. Balder is the high-powered lawyer retained to lead the suit for NERF, but when the suit has been announced to the press, the preparation operation shuts down. The publicity value has been achieved, Balder is withdrawing. Why? A colleague explains: Balder has an unblemished record of court wins because he knows a losing case when he sees it, and shuts it down. NERF is unconcerned; the short-term sensation was the goal.

Melting glaciers, icebergs calving off Antarctic glaciers, worldwide weather records, rising sea levels, satellite measurements of atmospheric warming, correlation of carbon dioxide with warming, expanding or contracting deserts: State of Fear takes them on, and many others, with the ease that Agatha Christie presents clues to a murder. What will stop many readers, and not once, is the question: If these are the facts, what science actually says, then how in Hell do the shibboleths of global warming keep proliferating? Crichton’s answers include: dozens or hundreds of complicated issues raised when you discuss the history and future of the whole Earth, its geology, its inhabitants, its atmosphere, and its oceans; lack of almost any adequate data on any aspect of the debate; the deadly ‘precautionary principle’ that in the absence of enough data, assume that the most catastrophic prediction might be true and prepare (that is: with the least data, take the most extreme actions); the enormous self-interest of scientists funded almost overwhelmingly by a single source (government) that already has embraced the answer; the ever-shifting timeframes (most predictions with a 10-year horizon already have been falsified by events) that keep getting longer; changes in the hypothesis (from the idea that temperature will rise over a century to ‘abrupt weather changes’ today demonstrate global warming); and on and on. Incredibly, it all comes into the story—usually riding on a roller coaster of action or borne by a lover’s quarrel.

There are almost 200 scientific references in State of Fear (all in footnotes easy to skip, skim, or note) and the sources are uniformly the premier peer-reviewed science journals such as Nature and Science. There are dozens of charts smacked down in the middle of racing action and rising suspense. You see the genuine pro at work as the question and answer sessions, the arguments, whizz past as part of the headlong plot and magnetic suspense that zip us toward the last page.

To the reader who, by the end of the novel, is compelled by the truth as well as the plot, Crichton offers a nonfiction afterword on global warming, the motives and mores of the environmental movement more generally, and his own ideas for rescuing the environment from the environmentalists. (A personal concern of Crichton’s is to save the national parks from decades of preservation about as effective as Soviet central economic planning.)

The novel is not new, of course, and its relevance today owes to its unique (in extent and depth) commitment to employ the thriller in serious commentary on a complex scientific question.

The novel is not new, of course, and its relevance today owes to its unique (in extent and depth) commitment to employ the thriller in serious commentary on a complex scientific question. Therefore, I will mention only briefly plot, character, and style; you are after all in the able hands of one of the pioneers of the technology thriller. And then, a review can assure the reader that a Crichton novel is complex, with subplots weaving like threads on a power loom, and characters around every corner, but still give no genuine sense of it.

John Kenner, the super hero of State of Fear, is like Crichton in his sterling education credentials (Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), his precocious achievements, and his apparently easy and early celebrity. He leads the battle to thwart the eco-terrorists in a worldwide hunt from Antarctica to a cannibal infested South Pacific Island to the deserts of Arizona. Kenner, like Crichton, is never at loss when it comes to science and technology and its implications; in any crisis, he thinks and he wins.

But the less-than-super heroes engage us most because they are baffled, fearful, able to grow, and ultimately as resourceful as anyone could expect: Peter Evans, the Hollywood lawyer employed by environmental foundations, and Sarah Jones, a kind of athletic feminist (at least in her confidence, prowess, and sexual challenge) who is secretary to the mysterious multi-millionaire who supports the environmentalists but is first to see the light.

Together, Evans and Jones join the battle and more than once are as good as dead in harrowing ways only Crichton can describe. There is love interest, of course, lots of it; and for sex appeal, the women seem to lead in this novel.

As for the bad guys in whose mouths Crichton puts all the arguments for global warming catastrophe (mostly rhetoric, ad hominem attacks, and endless insistence that ‘everyone agrees’), they are the ones for whom the point is not the truth about global warming. The point is that one environmental crisis after another, the constant “state of fear” named by the title, holds out the possibility of achieving and wielding power over others—all of mankind in all aspects of life, if possible. With them, no arguments and education work because truth is just not the point. Power is. (This is addressed in one of the appendices of the book.)

To the evildoers—a clandestine, ruthless underworld of outright environmentalist revolutionaries—as portended by mysterious death after death in the inventive Crichton mode almost from the start of the action—the answer is a bullet or a fist. There are characters in State of Fear that speak that language very well.

And for the worst of the Hollywood windbags and loudmouths who never stops ridiculing and bullying anyone who might disagree with him—and bray about the moral, ethical, and social morality of primitive tribal village life as contrasted with the dissolute luxury to which his Hollywood career dooms him—Crichton is up to inventing his fate.

Ted Bradley gazes down from the airplane on endless jungle dotted by an occasional dusty village with thatched huts:

“’Gorgeous,’ Bradley said. ‘Pristine!’ I can’t wait to get down there. This is as good as a vacation! Did anyone here know the Solomons were so beautiful?’

“From the front, Jennifer said, ‘Inhabited by headhunters for the most part.’

“’Yes, well, that’s all in the past….If it ever existed at all. I mean all that talk about cannibalism. Everybody knows it is not true. I read a book by some professor.’”

And that is not a bad approximation of the state in which the vast army of followers of the environmental movement, especially global warming, hold their knowledge and make their arguments.

Later that day, Bradley, hero of Hollywood serials, is dragged from a hut toward the stake at the center of the seething crowd of men, women, and children clapping, cheering, and waving sticks. Suddenly he convinces himself that there is no danger; they are cheering him—as everybody does!

Tied to the stake: “There was no pain, surprisingly no pain but it made him dizzy to see Sumbuca [the cannibal cult leader] hold up the bloody chunk of his cheek and, grinning, open his mouth and take a bite…He looked down to see a young boy of eight or nine cutting flesh from his underarm…And a woman raced forward, screaming for the others to get out of the way, and she hacked a slice from the back of his forearm.  And then the whole crowd was upon him…yelling and cutting and yelling and he saw one knife move toward his eyes, and felt his trousers tugged down, and he knew nothing more.”

Thank God.

I quote this unbearably gruesome climax with a purpose. Only this month, a new book has come out about Michael C. Rockefeller, scion of the wealthy New York dynasty that began with a towering industrial giant, who helped to create the entire petroleum industry, and descended in modern times into a serious politician for offices state and national. At 23, a Harvard education behind him, Michael headed for New Guinea in 1961. There, among the cannibals of the interior of Dutch New Guinea, he traded for the primitive art that his father, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, almost single handedly had made famous in the United States with his Museum of Primitive Art. Observers described Michael as unbelievably lucky, but also characterized him as supremely confident and dismissive of any invidious comments about the natives.

Michael and his female expedition companion dropped from sight in 1963, on another trip to New Guinea. The cause of death was reported and reaffirmed with great insistence as drowning. But always there were rumors of something much more terrible.

Savage Harvest, published this month by William Morrow, reports an expedition by National Geographic Traveler editor Carl Hoffman to discover the truth. The story is summarized at length, with photographs, in the Daily Mail (July 20, 2015). It is far more gruesome than the fictitious parallel by Crichton. Michael was tortured, beheaded, and eaten in a ritualistic cannibal killing by a notoriously violent New Guinea tribe. Prior to the beheading, every last scrap, in ritual fashion, was cut, scraped, and eaten; at some point, he died. He was a very brave man, who was captured risking his life to save his female companion. His education and his society had betrayed him with a politically correct sugarcoated paradigm of the way other cultures are described.

In the end, the nightmarish death of Michael Rockefeller, a death as devoid of any element of civilization as possible, is a parable for State of Fear. The arguments proffered for global warming—the most ambitious thrust of environmentalism in our day—are abstruse, fragmentary, and inconclusive. But its advocates, driven not by science but ideology, are dogmatic absolutists and aspiring totalitarians.

The chatter goes on and on in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles among the activists, publicists, lawyers, foundation executives, Hollywood stars, wealthy heirs, and society ladies, but the consequences today play out for real people in parts of the world where the only hope is the proven trajectory toward the industrial revolution—an aspiration vehemently rejected and discouraged with horror by the Western environmental “elites.” The harsh consequences today are delivered upon the most vulnerable (more than 50 million malaria deaths in tropical countries as a result of eliminating DDT to supposedly save our song birds).

But tomorrow such consequences will be delivered upon us—the “secure,” “wealthy,” and “privileged”—as environmentalist strike forces like Greenpeace win victory after victory. Their agenda is to halt what they view as the headlong destruction of the natural world caused by precisely what makes us secure and frequently comfortable: the economic advancement achieved over centuries by scientific innovation, technological invention, and industrial production in America and the world’s other modern economies.

There is no such thing as “limited” science, “controlled” technology, or “restrained” economic growth.

Has your capacity for fear been exhausted by the ‘fear industry’—the unholy alliance of media, government, and universities that has kept whole populations in a state of fear (and thus dependence upon the ‘experts’) since the Cold War began in the 1950’s?

If not, if you are able to summon up some alarm, let it be at the core philosophical environmentalists and their legions of passive followers who are planning how the earth can be saved from the plague of the human ‘interference’ of science, technology, and economic growth.

There is no such thing as “limited” science, “controlled” technology, or “restrained” economic growth. The motor of economic progress is Reason—man’s thinking, innovating, creating mind—and Reason does not function under coercive limits imposed by government bureaucrats and socialist planners. And stripped of the protection of science, technology, and production—that is, of all protection afforded by civilization—death can be merciless. Just ask Ted Bradley.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here