Although I touched on this in my first blog post, I felt somewhat concerned about how environmentalists are portrayed in Lucifer’s Hammer. They hate progress, they fight the savage fight, and they do not stand a chance against the wit and intellect of the technology crusaders.
Compare how Maureen and Mabe—I mentioned her in the first post as well—are portrayed in the book, for example. Maureen is smart, beautiful, and embraces modernity as the key to saving civilization. Mabe, on the other hand, shrewdly complains about the ills of modern technology to someone who is not responsible for them and then is easily subdued by a strangely calculated counterpoint. The first survives the comet and carries on the blessed word of technology into the new world; the second is ignorant and dies with the other city dwellers in LA. And it probably not a coincidence that the name Mabe is recycled for one of the Alim’s gang, the one who sleeps around and plays games with men. It’s almost as if the authors reinvent Mabe as a harlot to further discredit her viewpoint and to make her die twice.
Later on in the novel Harvey mentions Montross, who is the fifth president of the U.S., saying that he was “hyped up on the subject of environmentalism. Spray cans destroying the ozone, that kind of thing” (499). Very similar argument that Mabe makes to Harvey earlier, as if environmentalists have such a narrow scope of concerns and all they can think about are those damn spray cans and the ozone.
Finally, there’s the question of energy production. Niven and Pournell seem so convinced that environmentalists are so dismissive and ignorant of nuclear power that they automatically lump them together as adamant opponents of it. Not so. Nuclear power produces no pollutants with the exception of spent fuel rods, there is no extensive drilling for resources, and the amount of energy yielded far outweighs the ecological cost of production. If anything, many conservationists would be pro-nuclear power because it’s a better alternative to coal and oil. While some conservationists worry about the safety implications of these plants, the only really problem with nuclear power is the question of how to deal with nuclear waste, which evens the novel doesn’t cover. At the end of the world, with the means to carry away and bury radioactive waste products scarce or completely unattainable, how does the last nuclear power plant in the world safely dispose of its waste?
I agree — this novel does not have kind things to say about environmentalists. The novel’s primary grievance seems to be that environmentalists impede scientific progress…a fear that has not been borne out in the last thirty years. In truth, conservation has been an engine that has driven technological innovation.