Eco Illogical

By EUGENE LINDEN

Very early on in All the Trouble in the World (Grove/Atlantic; 340 pages; $22), P.J. O'Rourke's look at "the lighter side" of overpopulation, famine, ecological disaster and other global environmental woes, the reader begins to wonder whether somewhere between writing Republican Party Reptile and this latest effort the author suffered a stroke. Left intact are O'Rourke's accustomed descriptive flair and facility for throwaway lines -- " 'dying like flies' is not a simile you'd use in Somalia. The flies wax prosperous and lead full lives." Gone, however, is any faculty for building an argument.

In this disjointed collection of essays and articles, as in earlier books, O'Rourke assumes the role of libertarian praise singer, extolling the virtues of free markets and heaping scorn on the evils of clumsy, intrusive Big Government. He takes the position that despite the whining of enviros, people throughout the world have never been better off and that doomsayers who exaggerate the threat of ecological collapse are motivated by self-interest and a socialist agenda. In essence, he is offering the Wall Street Journal editorial page with a laugh track.

O'Rourke serves up his witticisms with plenty of statistics that support his views, and a reader might reasonably assume that he has undertaken exhaustive research. In fact, the book betrays a disturbing ignorance. The World Bank, for instance, does not squander money by making loans to poor nations "that will be paid back when the Pope sits shiva." Were it only so -- then the bank might stop making its ecologically dubious investments. Much of the recent criticism leveled at the institution has been that it makes too much money from those loans, not too little.

All right, reading a political humorist for details about the World Bank is as sensible as studying Oliver Stone's movie JFK for the facts of the Kennedy assassination. O'Rourke is after larger truths. But even the internal consistency of All the Trouble in the World is skewed. For example, to score points off former communists, O'Rourke catalogs the vast costs of pollution in the Czech Republic, but elsewhere he calls an unpolluted environment a "luxury good" and derides clean-up programs in the U.S. In one part of the book pollution helps trees; in another it kills them.

Like an out-of-shape fighter, O'Rourke chooses to pummel stiffs and has- beens. He wastes pages going after 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Planet, a quickly forgotten by-product of 1992 Earth Day hype. When he does take on a substantial foe, like Vice President Al Gore, he becomes almost hysterical, lumping Gore with Nazis and other totalitarians for observing that the world may be forced to respond to the global environmental crisis in a "collective, coordinated way."

The book's assertions will have many greens reaching for their beta- blockers. Among the most provocative: the argument that Bangladesh's problems must not stem from overpopulation since the city of Freemont, California, is just as crowded and yet sustains a pleasant, middle-class life- style; the idea that most Amazon Indians would rather move out of the rain forest; a description of Thoreau as a "sanctimonius beatnik." Still, O'Rourke is funny. In the Amazon he encounters one Yagua Indian with a grass skirt so elaborate that "he was lucky he hadn't been declared an endangered ecosystem from the waist down."

The most maddening aspect of All the Trouble in the World is that many of the issues O'Rourke raises deserve real discussion. Governments do tend to screw up well-intentioned environmental programs, just as they screw up everything else; it is difficult to assess the risks of environmental threats; markets and property rights play a vital if complicated role in environmental issues. However, serious debate -- or even productive humorous debate -- requires reason and a fair use of facts. "Logic is so annoying," O'Rourke cracks. Illogic is even more so.