Jan 01, 2009 07:08 PM
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This was my first Michael Crichton novel and I must say I am very impressed.Story and CharactersThis novel deals with complex and heavily debated topics of Global Warming and Environmental Pollution etc.
The story line and characters are pretty simple. We have George Morton, a philanthropist multimillionaire businessman supporting environmental causes. Peter Evans of Hassle and Black is the lawyer of George Morton.NERF **(National Environmental Resource Fund) is a major American activist group.
ELA (Environmental Liberation Front) is actually an extremist group that believes in using illegal force to achieve their environmental objectives.Dr. John Kenner is an undercover agent (portrayed to be of super human intelligence and super human strength) with his assistant Sanjong Thapa (a member of the armed forces of Nepal) work for a super secret intelligence agency (whose name resembled NSA but I can’t exactly recall now).
NERF is preparing a lawsuit against a bunch of corporate entities financed by George Morton. The lawsuit preparation is going on smooth. Suddenly Morton realizes that NERF might be using his money to help ELF so he decides to pull the (financial) plug on NERF.
Suddenly George is killed and now it is upto Evans, Kenner and a bunch of other people to figure out what NERF and ELF are upto (which obviously is going to devastate mankind by manipulating the environment).
Exchanges and Dialogues between the Characters
The author has presented the contemporary debate and his views on the topic by the way of dialogues and exchanges between the characters. These exchanges, in my opinion, make for the most important and interesting part of the story.
For instance, the episode where Evans is interviewed by the NERF litigation team to present their data to Evans assuming Evans is a member of the jury (in order to test his awareness levels. The idea is that if a well educated person like Evans is not able to follow the environmental data and jargon then how come an average jury member would be).
During this exchange, there are a lot of data presented that sort of argues in favor of Global Warming but concludes that the data is not conclusive.
Then story goes on and Evans and Kenner have a long exchange where Kenner systematically challenges Evans beliefs and understandings about Global Warming and breaks apart every bit of reasoning that Evans could advance.
The beauty of this particular episode is that Kenner makes reference to a series of authorities (science journals and data from various sources, all of them are presented by way of foot notes and given in the bibliography at the end of the novel) that Evans can’t refute. And as a lawyer Evans knows the importance of using authorities in arguments.
Later Kenner and Ted Bradley (an actor-activist supporter of Environmental Causes) have a long exchange which is again very interesting and amusing to read. Kenner again, making reference to a series of authorities, breaks apart every possible reasoning that Bradley could advance in favor of environmental causes. This particular episode shows how ignorant the general public might be about the realities of Global Warming and other allied issues. However, at the end Bradley calls him (Kenner) a spy working for the industry.
A fact based novel
In my opinion, this is one of those novels that not only entertains but presents an important contemporary issue, about which we all ought to know at least some, by that way of a very interesting and relevant story.
There is a discussion in the novel about “State of Fear” theory according to which the elites in the society are of the opinion that the public mind needs to be controlled and this fear of depleting natural resources and Global Warming and Environmental Pollution etc.
Were a product of these minds. These fears were needed because the USSR had just been disintegrated and the fear of Cold War was long gone. This fear has not been replaced by the fear of terrorism and Jihad and Mujahidin.
This idea actually caught my attention; however, I still don’t have enough evidence to actually believe this concept. I wouldn’t say this is nonsense, I’d say it is just a conspiracy theory. Noam Chomsky in his book ‘Propaganda and Control of Public Mind’ (or some title like that) has suggested something similar while discussing the industry of Public Relations. Michael Moore in his documentary film ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ has also suggested the same manipulation of public mind by Bush administration.
But that an Environmental lobby (that happens to be a very strong one) would be created for the same purposes or perhaps that the Environmental lobby is working with the same agenda in mind and that the Environmental lobby would subscribe to violent means (by creating or financing underworld environmental extremist and terrorists), in my opinion, makes for an amusing read, but is stretching it too far in the real world.
Conclusion
I conclude that it a good novel to read that only entertains but sends across a very important message. After the novel the author presents his conclusions. I agree with a few of them (not that I disagree with others but I have not examined the facts my self so I am not commenting on those).
The most important one I think is that nobody knows how much of the present warming is man made or natural and how it will increase or decrease and that Environmental principles (like Sustainable Development or the Precautionary Principle) are developed world’s way of saying – “We’ve got ours and we don’t want you to get yours, because you’ll cause too much pollution”.
I hope this one novel will make you learn a few things about a very important contemporary movement that is going on in the world and is gaining force and momentum every passing week. As inhabitants of this planet, I think it is our duty to preserve this planet because there is only one home to us human beings and that is Mother Earth.
But there are right ways of doing things and there are wrong ways of doing things. I guess it is time we took a long hard look at what we are doing and where we are going. This book might help.
