Weekend Getaway With Harold Evans
We have but one wish this forthcoming holiday season, and it's that Harold Evans might sit down with his darling wife Tina Brown so that the latter might educate the former on the American way: our unwavering devotion to the lunacy of pop culture and celebrity. Judging from his BBC radio broadcast this week, we're rather certain Harry has absolutely no foothold in American reality, opting to discuss global warming instead of the baby TomKat situation. And to think, at least five Britons are listening to Harry's "Letter from America" thinking the man actually knows the damn place. After the jump, Henry the Intern's weekly report.
Just when the world needed Harold Evans the historian to become Harold Evans the celebrity commentator — what with TomKat spawn crisis and all — he swung in the other direction: Harold Evans the environmentalist. With his latest contribution to BBC Radio 4, our tree hugger criticized author Michael Crichton for blaming "natural disasters" on "eco-maniacs desperate to publicise the case for controlling emissions of carbon dioxide."
Said Harold, "What about the contrary worldwide consensus of scientists that global warming is a man-made disaster in the making? Crichton's answer: 'If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus.' As I suppose is the old consensus that the earth is flat."
Then Harold showed his activist chops: "As a historian, I have never been much impressed by conspiracy theories left or right [but] if you happen to be in the market for a conspiracy theory today, there's a rather more credible one documented by the pressure group Greenpeace." It turns out there are 40 "high-falutin' bodies" with names like Advancement of Sound Science Centre Inc and the Annapolis Center for Science-based Public Policy that are "mouths at the [Exxon Mobil] nipple," Harold said.
Harold is especially disturbed that these front groups "are often treated in the media as if they were wholly independent scientific bodies." Sure, Exxon Mobil funds long-term research, but, as Harold quoted John Maynard Keynes, "in the long-term we are all dead,"
Skipping through Harold's discussion of the ozone layer and his extended quotation of Winston Churchill, we end where we began, with a word about Harold's fearless knocks against Crichton: "We are entering [a] period [of consequences] now with global warming. And if quoting Churchill in this context puts me in Michael Crichton's class of conspirators, I will bear it with fortitude." Great for him and his handful of BBC fans, but where does this leave TomKat, let alone the American spirit?