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Lauer’s SciFi Disaster
Examines Our Lack of Future
World won’t end
before more viewers subjected to ‘Today’ co-host’s wacky predictions
of doom.
By Dan Gainor
Business & Media Institute
June 15, 2006
“We are the problem,” declared NBC’s “Today”
co-anchor Matt Lauer doing a stint as host for the SciFi network.
Lauer was referring to mankind’s alleged misuse of planet Earth, but
his comment better suits the media and his apocalyptic documentary.
Lauer’s program, “Countdown to Doomsday,” merged nearly
every science-fiction disaster flick ever made – “The Terminator,”
“Deep Impact,” “I, Robot” and, of course, the SciFi Channel’s own
“Battlestar Gallactica.” Lauer’s news background gave an air of
respectability to the documentary and the show was filled with news
footage from Hurricane Katrina, 9/11 and more to reinforce that
impression.
In it, Lauer addressed what he called the 10 biggest
threats to mankind from aliens to “evil robots” to, of course,
global warming. It was up to viewers to decide whether they should
include media hype as one of the prominent dangers.
Predictably, climate change crusader Al Gore brought
his campaign to the program with video of him declaring: “I think
what we’re facing is a planetary emergency. It’s by far the most
dangerous crisis our civilization has ever confronted.”
Gore must have been very disappointed. Lauer and his
own horsemen of the apocalypse didn’t think global warming rated
higher than No. 4 on the list of top 10 threats. While Gore’s
lecture was scary enough to beat out “evil robots,” volcanoes and
terrorism, it fell two spots behind the current media frenzy for
avian flu.
“Us Homo sapiens are turning out to be as destructive a
force as any asteroid,” claimed Lauer during the two-hour long
disaster film. That’s some feat considering the devastating danger
from comets and asteroids was listed as the No. 1 threat.
When Lauer wasn’t quoting song lyrics, he was citing
discredited threats about over-population. “Earth’s intricate web of
ecosystems thrived for millions of years as natural paradises until
we came along, paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” said Lauer,
channeling singer Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” song.
But he was serious about the harm mankind had done to
the earth. “The stark reality is that there are simply too many of
us and we consume too much.” Had this been the History Channel
instead of the SciFi Channel, someone might have pointed out to
Lauer that claim has been around for more than 200 years. It traces
back to 1798 and Thomas Malthus whose work “An Essay on the
Principle of Population” has been proven wrong as the world
population has grown.
Malthus claimed that mankind was growing at a rate
faster than its food supply and eventually we would run out of food.
The late professor Julian Simon argued that Malthus was entirely
wrong and that human beings are a resource, not a drain. “Human
beings,” the Cato Institute quoted him writing, “are not just more
mouths to feed, but are productive and inventive minds that help
find creative solutions to man’s problems, thus leaving us better
off over the long run.”
But instead of someone of Simon’s stature, “Doomsday”
had Al Gore and a lengthy list of left-wing groups and spokespeople,
several focused just on global warming. None of them was any worse
than Lauer who claimed: “Freakish violent weather around the world
is becoming the norm and no place is safe.”
Lauer didn’t point out that no place has ever been safe
from weather and that climate has changed numerous times throughout
history – without mankind’s help. Instead, he was hyping the
immediate risk. “The devastating effects of global warming may be
much more imminent than most people realize,” he said.
Apparently, not soon enough since there were three
dangers listed that were even worse. One of them, “a gamma ray
burst,” occurs spontaneously in space and could destroy the earth
instantly. That was only No. 3.
Lauer was happy to talk about solutions – all of which
seemed to cost money. Some of those, he said, included “control
population, recycle, reduce consumption, develop green
technologies.” Still, “Countdown to Doomsday” was almost entirely
pessimistic about mankind’s ability to handle the threats.
SciFi Channel promos before the show morphed the word
“iF” into the network’s name, but for this movie the better word
would have been “when.” When will aliens attack? When will mankind
be destroyed? SciFi viewers might well hope that “when” will be
before rerun season.
Gainor has
previously written about the science fiction slant on the news.
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