Michael Crichton interview

January 02, 2005 Interview: Jasper Gerard meets Michael Crichton Global warming? Now that really is fiction A giant wave envelops a tropical island. Victims scramble for survival. The world watches in horror. Michael Crichton has a knack for novels that are of the moment, but never has his fiction collided so savagely and swiftly with reality. Until now, with State of Fear, the Jurassic Park author�s latest blockbuster. As befits one of the world�s top-selling authors, there is a monster twist in the book. So while the real tsunami was a product of nature, Crichton�s fictional one was started secretly by obsessive environmentalists trying to frighten the world into believing that global warming is about to cause the apocalypse. For after three years of painstaking research, the father of the techno-thriller believes he has reached a shocking conclusion: global warming is hot air. We met before the 603-page tree trunk of a novel had lumbered into bookshops, but the internet was already crackling with condemnation. �I have only done one talk show (to promote State of Fear) and people are clearly quite confused. One lady (caller) wanted to know why I wasn�t showing concern for earthquakes being caused by pollution. I said, actually there is no evidence about that.� Boy, will the green types be hot under the collar. As Britain sweats over missing its carbon dioxide emission targets, Crichton sends a simple message: chill. And if your heart aches for Third World suffering, divert the �trillions of dollars wasted on Kyoto to the 850m people who don�t have clean water, 20,000 of whom die each day�. If you doubt Crichton�s research, he offers enough footnotes citing scientific journals to fill a hefty volume of their own. As a Harvard physician and at the age of 22 a visiting anthropology lecturer at Cambridge, he is in nobody�s intellectual slipstream. It is not so much that Crichton is being reactionary; rather, his view offends our almost religious veneration of green issues, a faith in mother earth which holds that driving to the bottle bank in a belching 4x4 is a profound act of worship. Crichton admits his Hollywood cronies express horror at dinner parties as he expounds his theory. In response, he has made the prize chump in State of Fear a Hollywood star who dribbles on about saving the planet. Forget limousine liberals, Crichton�s new target is �Gulfstream environmentalists�. �I am asked to discuss it � the kind of �Why are you a heretic?� conversation,� he says. �Often they are in the entertainment industry and on the boards of environmental groups. It soon becomes clear they have no information, only attitudes.� Two developments persuaded Crichton to abandon his Californian liberal world view. One was in 2002 having a gun held to his head by burglars, who tied up Taylor, his daughter, then aged 13. �They told me not to move and I figured it was best not to argue,� he says. It convinced him we must be tougher on bad guys, be they cat burglars or Saddam Hussein. His second awakening was seeing that scientists had become so cowed by environmental activists and the media that they dared not proclaim what their research showed: that, so far, it appears global warming is hardly happening. �The global change in temperature that everyone is so excited about is one-third of a degree,� he asserts. �The UK is doing better than most targets. It is extremely hard. In America, where we have had two of the coldest summers in the past century, they are underwhelmed by distressing notions of it getting warmer.� This is quite unlike your usual Hollywood interview, but perhaps that is because Crichton is not your usual tinseltown personality. He started studying English at Harvard but switched to anthropology and, after graduating, enrolled at Harvard medical school. As a student he wrote thrillers under assumed names. In 1969 he hit the big time with The Andromeda Strain, written under his own name. He is, simply, a workaholic who remains a scientist more than a wordsmith. His plots always race; only his prose sometimes sags. At his London hotel the suited 6ft 7in giant is ensconced, not with a glamorous blonde but a laptop. In a mediocre year he might earn �70m � in the 1990s he created America�s top telly show, ER, bestselling novel, Disclosure, and highest-grossing film, Jurassic Park. But he has little interest in the trappings of success. The most remarkable feature of the burglary � in which he managed to untie himself and Taylor, then call the police � was that it occurred in his modest bungalow. There he lived in anonymity, only the astute burglars realising the identity and wealth of its owner. For even taking into account last year�s �20m divorce settlement to his fourth wife, Anne-Marie, he could clearly afford the swankiest palace in the Hollywood Hills. But this is a man moved by fine argument, not fine art � which might explain why Anne-Marie complained that he was so focused on work he was �remote�. Actually, this dapper, well-preserved 62- year-old comes across as jovial and drily amusing, though for a purveyor of popular fiction he is fundamentally, and surprisingly, serious. Soon he is proffering me graphs showing British temperatures stretching back to 1659. �For the first year (of his research) I thought I must be missing something to explain why everyone is so excited by global warming,� he said, �but the more I looked at the detail, the worse it got.� His contention? That an equally likely cause of the � tiny � increase in temperature is the ugly urbanisation that is scarring our planet, which seems to heat up the world more than we may have realised. �I was astounded by a BBC report that Manchester is eight degrees warmer than the countryside surrounding it,� he says. Which in his view begs the question: why is Greenpeace not campaigning vigorously against Prescott�s new towns, rather than rattling on about global warming? The fact is, average British temperatures do look much the same but recent years have seen sharp rises. Crichton turns this around. �From 1940 to 1970, carbon dioxide was going up yet temperatures went down. I don�t understand why,� he says. If there is a link between gas emissions and temperatures it is clearly a less direct one than we have come to accept. But isn�t this a cynical attempt to make us feel better about polluting, which will delight his biggest market � America � after it rejected Kyoto? He leans back sharply, perhaps offended. �The notion that telling the truth has negative consequences has always bothered me,� he says. However, he concedes we should try to use less fossil fuels. Is this because, whatever the truth about global warming, pollution does seem to cause more problems, such as asthma? �You are right, there does seem to be a steady rise in western countries for asthma.� Despite this, he still opposes the �centralised� decision-making of Kyoto, whose reduction targets, he says, are �trivial�. �When America dropped out they had to give Japan a very good deal,� he says. �It�s a principle we understand in the movie business. If you lose your principal actor you have to pay whatever you need to get a replacement.� His thesis seems cynical, even complacent, but cogently argued. �I have done a lot of reading, and the economics seem clear: you are better off waiting to see if it does become a real problem and then catching up. It may never happen. �California passed a law 20 years ago decreeing a proportion of cars would have to be electric powered. My town, the People�s Republic of Santa Monica, built these electrical facilities on the sides of the road � and there they sit, unused, just tripping people up so they can sue the city.� He pauses. �If it does turn out we need to do something, we could probably do it in 10 years, certainly less than a century. False preparation is always a disaster � in anticipation of entering he first world war the United States bought 20,000 horses, for cavalry charges. Then they had to work out what to do with all these damn horses because there was something called tanks.� It is an argument that will comfort President Bush, though Crichton insists �it is a long time since I have been enthusiastic about any president of the United States�. But isn�t it true America is guzzling too much of the world�s gas? �Yes,� he says, �but people have this image of turning up to a gas station to be told we have run out. They have been worrying about the end of oil since 1860. �If we are so concerned, we should stop using all resources right now. Talking about resources ignores human ingenuity. In 1900 nobody could have anticipated 80% of France�s electrical power would come from a source not known at that time: the atom. �If they knew there would be a massive increase in population in the 20th century, what would they have worried about? Probably about where we would get enough horses, and what will we do with all the manure.� A good crack, but his argument rests on the principle of induction: that because something has always turned up in the past, it will in the future. But this is cyclical. How can we really be sure our children will have enough resources? �No, we can�t be assured. But the other side of that coin is can we be sure that money we spend looking ahead to 2100 won�t be wasted? Every decision has a cost somewhere else. People say our grandchildren will loathe us, but they will also loathe us if we waste trillions of dollars tackling a problem that is non-existent.� He ends his book with the sweeping assertion that green groups have done almost as much harm as big polluters, but surely it is grotesque to equate Greenpeace with, say, the company that gave us the Bhopal disaster? As an example of environmental do-gooding he says stopping bush fires in America�s national parks has been misguided � it has meant that dead wood has not been cleared allowing new growth and thus wildlife to flourish. �(It�s) arguably more disastrous than clear-cutting the forest. Wrong ideas, wherever they come from, are deleterious: I don�t want to know your intentions, I want to know your outcomes. Otherwise you are like the person who runs over your child and says, �I really didn�t mean to do that�: f*** off.� The shock of an expletive from this most courteous of Americans reverberates around the room. �People say, �Oh, these statistics are from business, I have to treat that with caution, but this picture of a melting icecap from Greenpeace, I can trust that�; no you can�t, they are in the same business.� His global warming argument is certainly provocative. The danger is that less nimble minds than Crichton�s will use his thesis as justification to carry on polluting � with all its dangers for health. Disclosure, in which Michael Douglas sues Demi Moore for sexual harassment, landed Crichton in difficult, if lucrative, controversy. That, though, is petty stuff compared to this dispute. He has considered this. �When I reached my conclusion I thought, �I am a happy person, approaching senior citizenhood. I have a good life. I don�t need the kind of attacks this is going to draw�.� It is too late now: stand by for a literary earthquake. Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.