Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" Book Review

Book Review
State of Fear
By Michael Crichton

The book centers around attorney Peter Evans who works for a well known, well funded, and well respected environmental organization. He discovers that such organizations are just as influenced by funding and politics as are the industrial corporations such organizations denigrate. When people start to die, Evans finds himself in the middle of a global eco terrorist conspiracy which could engulf the entire planet and cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

Michael Crichton has a seemingly endless capacity for producing thought provoking and genuinely exciting stories. State of Fear is no exception. In this novel, Michael Crichton explores the incredibly diverse views which exist on the issue of global warming and how politicization and publicity distort what little we actually know about the environment and how to manage it.

I found that those of Crichton’s characters who opposed espousal of global warming were more likeable and more persuasive. This could lead to an impression that the novel was intended to speak out against the idea of global warming. Crichton goes to some lengths at the end of his novel to express his own personal views. He does this in an author’s note as well as a very thought provoking appendix.

I believe the reason for the novel’s apparent bias against global warming stems from the author’s belief that balance needs to be restored to the issue. Most people simply assume global warming is fact. They assume global warming has already been proven. This is simply not true.

Records clearly show a warming trend, which began around 1850, but the influence human industrialization has on this trend is, as yet, unknown. This is because global warming theorists have yet to make consistently accurate predictions about the state of the environment even in the near future.

Crichton’s novel also explores the phenomenon of scientific bias. Scientists are all too aware of where their funding comes from and it is natural human behaviour to insert bias in research in favour of the people who fund it. In his author’s note and appendix at the end of the book, the author correctly points out that in many ways, today’s scientists are like Renaissance artists commissioned to paint a portrait of their patron. Just as Renaissance artists were pressured to paint flattering portraits, so today’s scientists are pressured to produce research flattering to the ideology of their patrons. While this may be unintentional for the most part, it is a natural product of the human spirit. When providing food for your family depends on research your patron approves, research tends to favour what the patron wishes.

This novel is thought provoking and has an exciting, if sometimes predictable plot. It is packed with information and contains a number of long dialog sequences in which characters argue the pros and cons of global warming and current environmental management techniques.

Since this is my blog, I feel I have the right to express my personal view on the environment. I feel the one thing Michael Crichton fails to consider in his novel is the ever growing human population and its propensity for destroying the environment. Rain forest and wilderness is being destroyed relentlessly because, when you put it simply, people have to live somewhere. Thus, even if global warming is not proven conclusively, there is no question in my mind that the environment itself is being consistently and relentlessly degraded by the unchecked expansion of the human population. And I cannot help but think that such degradation will have an adverse effect on the overall health of the planet.

Having said this, I believe that concern over the environment is akin to the folk song generation in that many protest artists felt they were the only ones standing for truth, peace and love. What people like Bob Dylan and other “angry protestors” failed to realize is that even establishment supporting people stood for the same virtues. They differed in how these virtues could be achieved.

For instance, the flower power movement advocated pacifism by withdrawing from conflict. Many of the same anti-war protestors of the 60’s who protested Vietnam would have protested any war, including the fight against Nazi Germany. Their opponents, often classed as right wing extremists, advocated peace through strength. They realized that nations like the United States had protected borders precisely because such nations were effective at waging war. For all its evils, mutually assured destruction (MAD) worked. The United States and the Soviet Union did not annihilate one another nor did they initiate World War III.

Environmentalists often make the same mistake the 60’s protestors made. They feel anyone who opposes them automatically wants to destroy the planet for reasons of greed. It is true some do not care about the planet, but it is equally true that most do. Many environmentalists are good at articulating the problem – although not as good as they think. However, they are woefully inept at proposing solutions.

Take solar power for example. Environmentalists will say we should move away from fossil fuels toward solar power and the reason we do not is because oil companies are prepared to protect their profits even at the expense of the planet. This sounds noble and I personally would love for us to use solar energy instead of oil. But the simple truth is we cannot do so at this time. Solar energy is woefully inadequate to fill the needs of our industrial society. Many solar household systems, for example, have the ability to switch to main electricity at need. They have this capability because they need it and such switching happens all the time. Solar power does not have the capability of running an industrial factory, nor does it have the ability to generate the power necessary to make solar panels on a wide industrial scale. Solar power as it now exists can help and I certainly do not oppose its use, but our society simply cannot transition away from fossil fuels without bringing unbounded economic and social chaos upon the world. The amount of energy it takes to produce a solar panel is roughly equal to the amount of energy a solar panel gives back in its life time. This means a great deal of fossil fuel generated energy is still required to produce the materials which generate energy from the sun and all this for a zero net gain.

There is no question governments and organizations should pour money into solar, and other alternative energy sources. But at present, no alternative energy source provides a solution which meets our need for energy consumption.

And while it is true we could all use less energy, planes, automobiles, massive electricity consumption and land usage for human beings are a way of life. Disruption of these things and others would cause catastrophic damage to society and the standard of living. And poverty is probably the biggest cause of environmental degradation.

I think the real problem, and one which was not really addressed in the book (for it was not the author’s intention to do so) is there are far too many people. This is not a politically correct thing to believe, but any examination of nature shows us that when the population of a species explodes, the entire environment in the affected area suffers, including the offending species itself. I will be even more politically incorrect and say that, in actual fact, there are far too many people in certain regions of the world. The regions affected in this way suffer catastrophic environmental degradation. The environment can only realistically sustain populations which are in balance. Our population is most definitely out of balance. The more people we have, the more poverty we have. The more poverty we have, the more environmental degradation we have.

Fish stocks are running out. Forests are being lost every day. Why? Because people need to eat, and they need wood with which to build houses. Industry supplies these things to us, as well as our cars, our plastic containers, and our electricity, because we demand it, and we are demanding more and more of it. The poor who often do not have these things naturally desire them, and why shouldn’t they?

The best friend we have to help us save the environment is self interest. Michael Crichton points out that there was no need for legislation to ban the horse and buggy as cars became more widely used. It just happened because cars were more convenient, longer lasting, and you did not have to dispose of horse cookies after driving. We need an environmental strategy which takes our energy needs into consideration but as the human population grows, this will become difficult or next to impossible. We cannot construct a good environmental policy without addressing the problem of human population. What we need is balance without fanatical ideological motivation.