Climates of Ignorance

“Collapse,” UCLA physiology professor Jared Diamond’s probing historical analysis of why some civilizations endure while others decline, and “State of Fear,” Michael Crichton’s lurid thriller about the evils of radical environmentalists, are literary and scientific polar opposites. The two talked-about books do share a tendency to finger as villains narrow-minded leaders who put ideology and power above scientific truth. But Diamond, whose views reflect those of most mainstream scientists, and Crichton, author of popular medical and scientific potboilers, part company over what the truth is.

Crichton’s enviro-villains try dastardly things -- such as blowing up part of Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf and swamping California with a tsunami -- to scare the public into thinking that global warming is a growing, catastrophic problem.

Diamond’s historical villains go out of their way to ignore environmental danger. Diamond explains, for example, how Mayan kings were so occupied with their own political struggles that they willfully ignored the ecological damage inflicted by their economy, from eroded hills to denuded forests. That damage was, Diamond says, a chief cause of the collapse of the Mayan empire.

Crichton’s book is lightweight fiction, but there’s power in his sunny diminishment of human causes of warming. “Collapse” may show today’s political leaders a responsible long-term strategy derived from political history. But “State of Fear” shows why they may have a tough time enacting it.

A worldview like Crichton’s has kept Congress from ratifying the oldest of global warming treaties, the Kyoto Protocol. With Russia having added its signature, the treaty to reduce greenhouse gases is set to take effect in more than 100 nations next month The United States, a major author of the 1997 treaty but still not a signatory, won’t be participating.