All situations, events, and persons depicted herein are fictional. Any similarity without satirical intent is purely coincidental. All opinions are solely those of the author. Copyright 1996, 1997 by Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Portions of this text may be reprinted for book reviews. October 1996.
Dr. Theo Ree, let me first congratulate you on the success of your book. I'm simply awed by your style. That grandmotherly camouflage is pure genius. Sort of like Ma Barker dressed up as Mother Theresa.
Dr. Theo Ree: Or you dressed up as a journalist.
Mike Walrus: Exactly! Now, let's start with the book title. What exactly does it mean?
Dr. Theo Ree: Two things. First, it refers to what is happening to my ego. All this talk about little old me being the next Rachel Carson is heady stuff.
Second, it's a not-so-veiled reference to what is happening to my bank account... as well as the bank accounts of environmental advocacy groups smart enough to jump on the Our Swollen Future bandwagon.
The research budgets of federal agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will also skyrocket. All resulting from the Congress', public's, and media's blissful gullibility.
Mike Walrus: You know, Dr. Theo Ree, I'm not all that gullible. I knew that Edit Broadley was way off base when he did that crazy story on the pesticide Alar. But would he listen to me? Nooooo...
Morley Suffer: I see that Vice President Al Bore wrote the foreword to Our Swollen Future. Can we expect his future to "swell" also?
Dr. Theo Ree: Absolutely. Our Swollen Future positions him politically as Captain Planet,...you know . . . like from the cartoon,..."he's our hero... gonna take pollution down to zero!" That will come in handy for the presidential election in 2000.
Edit Broadley: Dr. Theo Ree, wouldn't it have been more credible to have a world-class scientist write the foreword? Say maybe a Nobel prize winner?
Dr. Theo Ree: Sure... but all the scientists who read my book died laughing. And anyway, the book wasn't written for scientists.
The book is written for the uninformed public who scare easily and who can't critically evaluate my message or any of the supporting information. That's the part I like.
You see...like the Vice President, I'm not really a scientist either. I'm not sure that being a scientist is even that important.
Look, industry has plenty of scientists and it's been getting its rear-end handed to it for years by skillful environmental advocacy groups and clever bureaucrats who don't know science from taxidermy.
Morley Suffer: Dr. Theo Ree, I'm quite impressed that you were able to transform yourself from a sheep farmer into a "scientist" and acclaimed author.
Dr. Theo Ree: Thanks Morley... I'd been an environmental activist for a long time. But I got tired of being known as a "little old lady tree hugger in tennis shoes."
So, at fifty-one years of age, I went back to graduate school. After seven long years, I finally got my Ph.D. in zoology.
Mike Walrus: Zoology? Isn't that the study of animal biology? But Our Swollen Future is about people!
Dr. Theo Ree: But people ARE animals. Didn't you ever see the movie Animal House? There was Otter and Pinto and...
Mike Walrus: I assume that since you earned your Ph.D. you've been conducting scientific research. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Theo Ree: Well, I've never really conducted any scientific research. I've never published any peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature. Nor do I intend to.
Mike Walrus: Why not?
Dr. Theo Ree: Mike, all that science stuff is for LOSERS. Most scientists spend their lives toiling in some sweat shop of a lab, living from grant to grant, and never getting half the credit they deserve for being so smart. It's dull and it's dead-end.
In contrast, Our Swollen Future is morphing me into Rachel Carson and a prominent, international celebrity--practically overnight!
Ironically, my book will probably drive much scientific research for years to come. Federal agencies like the EPA are already planning expensive research programs on endocrine disrupters.
And as a further example of my influence, Congress has already enacted my book into law!
Mike Walrus: What?!
Dr. Theo Ree: Yep. The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 requires that the EPA test for pesticides that may be considered endocrine disrupters. That was one of my key recommendations.
Mike Walrus: Who would have expected such bounty from a Republican-controlled Congress? How did that happen?
Dr. Theo Ree: By the summer of 1995, thanks to weak leadership and poor strategy, the Republican Congress badly lost the public relations war in its effort to force U.S. environmental policy to be based on real science.
My enviro buddies were able to convince the media and public that basing environmental policy on science, and balancing the costs and benefits of regulations, amounted to a rollback in public health protection.
Total mularky... but totally effective.
I even heard my friends saying that the Nazis used cost-benefit analysis.
Anyway, ever since regulatory reform went down the toilet, Congress has been running scared on ALL environmental issues.
I can't wait for the next Congress in January. They're so scared of the politics of the environment that they'd probably vote to replace George Washington with me on the dollar bill.
Lesley Stalled: Can you tell us a little about your co-author, Diane Dumbasanoxski? Didn't she do most of the actual writing for your book?
Dr. Theo Ree: Yes. Diane's a great science writer. She was a newspaper reporter for the Boston Glib and a recipient of the prestigious Knight Fellowship in Science Distortion at Massachusetts Institution for the Technically Incompetent.
She used to write a column called How and Why (Did I Get This Job)? Her columns addressed burning scientific issues like what happens to birds during hurricanes, what happens to helium balloons let go in the sky, and why do mocking birds dive bomb pedestrians.
I must confess, however, that I almost decided to use someone else as the writer.
Lesley Stalled: Why?
Dr. Theo Ree: Well in 1993, Diane wrote a column on why declining birth rates were good for the planet. Not only did Diane write that fertility rates have declined because of contraceptive use, but she wrote that the birth rate is still twice what is needed for a stable world population and that the soaring world population is increasing stress on the planet.
All this is completely contradictory to Our Swollen Future. To make the Our Swollen Future team and to have a shot at the big time, Dumbasanoxski had to recant her heretical beliefs and accept that manmade chemicals in the environment are causing declining birth rates and that declining birth rates are bad.
Lesley Stalled: That sounds a little like the Inquisition. You know how Galileo and other scientists were excommunicated and exiled in the Middle Ages for having scientifically correct, but politically incorrect, beliefs.
Wasn't Galileo punished for saying that the earth is not the center of the universe?
Dr. Theo Ree: I think he got off light! The religion of environmentalism is based on the concept that nature is the center of the universe. Nature is good, people are bad, and science is a tool of the devil.
We long for the pollution-free days before the industrial revolution.
Lesley Stalled: Isn't that when life expectancy was only about 35 years of age?
Dr. Theo Ree: Exactly my point. Nature good, people bad.
Mike Walrus: Let's go back to the book. What about the third author, John Peterson Liars? What was his role?
Dr. Theo Ree: His role was critical, perhaps more so than mine. He rounded up the cash that allowed Diane and me to work on the book. You know, you can find a bad scientist and a good writer almost anywhere. But people that can raise money are few and far between.
Mike Walrus: Oh...well, while we're on the subject, where exactly did funding for Our Swollen Future come from?
Dr. Theo Ree: From a number of leftist advocacy groups, including the Pew Scholars Pogrom, the C. U. Rott Foundation, and the Pew Charlatan Trusts to name a few.
Mike Walrus: Can you tell me something about these groups?
Dr. Theo Ree: They tend to fund organizations and individuals who, like me, take positions on environmental and public health issues that basically have nothing to do with science.
Mike Walrus: I was wondering about that. You know in the book you state that Liars had a background in science but extensive experience in national and international environmental policy. Wouldn't it have been more helpful for him to have extensive experience in science and maybe a background in that other stuff?
Dr. Theo Ree: Mike... what did I say earlier about the need for science in this project?
Mike Walrus: Oh yeah.
Copyright © 1996, 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.