The NERF of Some People
Crichton, Michael
Book in Review actually told them they were wasting their time if they didn't matriculate at the top universities, such as his beloved Harvard. No, he did. When Bill Buckley famously...
...A more sophisticated, better-financed group is pulling the strings...
...Kenner asks in one exchange...
...The only problem is that no science supports the claim...
...Stephen Schneider, creator of a computer simulation model which purports to "prove" global warming, shared his blunt theory on how to disseminate information to the poor, stupid masses...
...Crazy," she said nodding...
...Global warming, induced by United States industry and governmental policy, is causing sea levels to rise, NERF con-tends, and the livelihood of the indigenous people therein is in peril...
...B O O K S I N R E V I E W actually told them they were wasting their time if they didn't matriculate at the top universities, such as his beloved Harvard...
...When Bill Buckley famously quipped that he'd rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston directory than by the entire faculty of Harvard, Hugh was, well, preparing to go to Harvard...
...It's a great case...
...These asides alone are worth the book's cover price...
...The rest of the novel is fleshed out with a series of mod-ern day Platonic dialogues between characters that take the dire word of the mainstream media and environmental organizations at face value and other characters tired of the charade...
...State ofFear is labeled a "techno-thriller," which translates The story, entertaining a s it is, roughly into something like, Good Nerds vs...
...Fools are not suffered gladly in Crichton's world...
...He came, by the way, bare-knuckle ready for those detractors...
...offshoot group, Ecotage, which contends, "We must make this an insecure and uninhabitable place for capitalists and their projects...
...NERF sees that the case for global warming is getting weaker, not stronger, and that the profitable State of Fear is waning...
...We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles...
...But it soon becomes clear that the diabolical plan has not been hatched by any of the usual suspects...
...So the group decides, for the good of mankind, to prick the public's con-science with a few manmade disasters they can pawn off on global warming...
...Sure, there will be a few casualties, but it's all for the greater good...
...Then I can say that global warming is not a threatbut still favor environmental controls, can't I?" The story, entertaining as it is, often seems like nothing more than a vehicle for Crichton's view that the environmental movement rests more on emotion than reason, and can quite often do more harm than good...
...As the book opens, the group is planning the lawsuit to end all law-suits on behalf of the people of a small South Pacific island, Vanuatu...
...I mean, the whole world believes it" 04, burning the (global) village to save it...
...If Crichton's plot seems unrealistic, con- rests more on emotion than reason...
...Reading the aforementioned dialogues, one gets the feeling these are conversations Crichton would very much like to have with his detractors...
...A terrorist conspiracy...
...And shortly after declaring cannibalism a myth invented by evil white male capitalists, he is...
...Little explanation or motive is given for the crime, but slowly, as snapshots of other crimes are intertwined with various purchases of high-tech science equipment and weaponry throughout the world, lines connecting blurry, isolated events come into sharper relief...
...Hugh needs an anti-credentialist epiphany, and soon...
...sider the words of real-life eco-warriors such as Lamont Cole, who once lectured, "To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem...
...Everything is going according to plan until the group's sugar daddy, benefactor George Morton, starts to get suspicious...
...This is the best contribution we can make towards protecting the earth and struggling for a liberating society!' Or how about Thomas Lovejoy, an assistant secretary to the Smithsonian Institution...
...They're B O O K S I N R E V I E W CONTRARIAN AND COMBATIVE, State ofFear is actually two books...
...He follows it all the way to its logical, depraved end: run-amok environmentalists convinced of the righteousness of their cause trafficking in a world of danger and manipulation...
...Graphs and charts are printed in the midst of characters' dialogue...
...Naturally...
...Typically, the ELF takes credit for burning down housing developments or parking garages full of SUVs, which is why it quickly becomes evident that the complexity of the plot in State of Fear is not the brainchild of these black-clad, mad-at-their-dad anarchists...
...To be sure, one of the beauties of the Blogosphere is that it welcomes correction faster than the Old Media ever did, and that correction happily comes from people who know things...
...64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR February 2005 France of a graduate student with a passion for oceanography and the study of waves...
...In order to remain relevant and flush with cash, the NERF depends on fawning press coverage and settlements from the near-annual lawsuits they bring against the EPA...
...No," comes the uncomfortable answer from an actor...
...Scientists and lawyers must find reading Crichton to be a very self-affirming than a vehicle for Crichton's view experience...
...These are emotion-laden dialogues with casual environmentalists nearly always having their backsides handed to them by the skeptics...
...To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have," Schneider said...
...The bibliography includes a spirited defense of Bjorn Lomberg, the former Greenpeace activist, whose book sifting truth from rhetoric, The Skeptical Environmentalist, was treated as an act of apostasy by his former colleagues...
...Or the Earth First...
...An obvious caricature of Martin Sheen is Ted Bradley, an actor who plays the president on television...
...There is, in fact, nary an Islamic fundamentalist or neo-Nazi in sight...
...The long, winding path leads to the doorstep of the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF), a lawyer-heavy environmental group with a multi-million dollar budget and enough swooning celebrity endorsements to choke a barn full of organic grain fed "free range" cattle...
...If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favor of doing nothing about crime?' MIT professor-slash-action hero Dr...
...Like Hugh...
...The first is the "techno-thriller" with all the action and intrigue that marks the genre serving as the backbone and ribs of the book...
...Sea levels aren't rising fast enough...
...He spent three years researching the book and, although it is a work of fiction, footnotes of articles in science journals abound...
...well, ingloriously eaten alive by real live island cannibals...
...February 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...
...David Brooks in a 1989 Wall Street Journal article quoted Lovejoy as saying, "The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we are the disease...
...After reading 600 pages in which Crichton brazenly mocks radical environmentalists and their patsy Hollywood enablers, it is fairly easy to see what side of the fence the author falls on...
...At first it appears the conspiracy is the work of eco-terrorists at the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), which is composed of distinct, unconnected terror cells that act at will...
...Bad Nerds as the fate of the world hangs in the often seems like nothing more balance...
...From there, it's the Forces of Morton (lawyers, personal assistants, and militarized, government-aligned professors) against the Forces of NERF (lawyers, personal assistants, and militarized, nongovernment-aligned professors...
...The novel opens with the strange murder in Shawn Macomber is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...The last 30 pages combine an explanation of Crichton's own views on global climate change with an extensive bibliography...
...He is dismissed as a "fool" and an "eco-pimp" by the novel's protagonists...
...More beautiful still: How the Blogosphere turns journalism over to Everyman...
...But who could it be...
...Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest" In his controversial new book, State of Fear, Michael Crichton examines this strain of low-cal Los Angeles fascism...
...Yeah, they might be pushing paper today, but they could be Rambo tomor- that the environmental movement row, should the need arise...
...But he does nevertheless allow some slack for those who have had the wool pulled tightly over their eyes, as in this early exchange between two of the novel's lawyer heroes attempting to grapple with the truth: "You know, it would be crazy to imagine that glob-al warming wasn't a real phenomenon," he said...
...tip# The \IHARFof Some People State of Fear Michael Crichton (HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95) Reviewed by Shawn Macomber DURING AN OCTOBER 1989 inter-view with Discover magazine, Dr...
Vol. 38 • February 2005 • No. 1
