Book Review:
All The Trouble In The World

by Dave Bealer

This review first appeared in the April 1995 issue of Dream Forge magazine.

Copyright © 1995 Dave Bealer, All Rights Reserved.

Repent, the end of the world is near! You'd think it was inevitable, what with all the (very fashionable) worrying about famine, plague, overpopulation, racial hatred, and environmental catastrophe. Doomsday myths have always been popular, but modern pseudo-science gives them an air of authenticity that is very seductive, even to the modern skeptical mind, unless you happen to have the actual facts.

P.J. O'Rourke has been poking holes in over-inflated egos and debunking popular myths since the 1960s. A former editor of the National Lampoon, these days he writes for Rolling Stone, and certainly gathers no moss, seeking out assignments as a correspondent that allow him to travel where the action is around the world. Unlike most popular economic/political commentators, O'Rourke has actually been to places like Bangladesh, Somalia, Bosnia, and Vietnam. He makes the most of these experiences, using them as the basis of his latest best seller, All The Trouble In The World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty.

In the section on overpopulation, O'Rourke points out that Fremont, California, a tony city located on San Francisco Bay, has the exact same population density as Bangladesh. Even the worst doomsday predictions would leave the planet with the same population density as the State of Pennsylvania. Anyone who has driven Interstate 80 through north central Pennsylvania can assure you that even in the worst case scenario, there will still be plenty of desolate places where people can "get away from it all."

O'Rourke landed an assignment in Somalia, where he investigated famine. P.J. discovered that there is really plenty of food in Somalia. You don't even need food stamps to get it, just an AK-47. Statistics prove that the modern world grows a lot more food, feeds a lot more people than ever before, yet suffers from more famine. O'Rourke notes that "This would seem to defy physical law . . . When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved."

A long time commentator on American cultural eccentricities, O'Rourke is really in his element when he gets going on the shambles that is the American environmental movement. Starting off with the U.S. Government's horrendous record as a steward of the environment, he finishes with a summary of his attendance at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Along the way, he takes well deserved swipes at such noted environmental "thinkers" as Henry David Thoreau and Roderick Nash.

O'Rourke sums up his treatise on global suffering with a chapter on Economic Justice, subtitled: "The Hell with Everything, Let's Get Rich." As an example he uses the Republic of Vietnam. Although still a communist dictatorship, the citizens of Vietnam "have let go of Marx with both hands." Everyone in the country is hustling, making things or providing services on the side, in addition to whatever "official" job they might have. O'Rourke notes that "You can do pretty much what you want to do in Vietnam. You are not, however, supposed to have opinions about doing it." To give you an idea how well the country is doing, just 20 years after the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon -- Vietnam is sending food aid to the former Soviet Union.

ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty. by P.J. O'Rourke; Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN: 0-87113-580-9 $22

Sound Byte
"Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes." - P.J. O'Rourke

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