a globe-spanning series of adventures to thwart various ELF-manufactured disasters before these disasters kill thousands of people. Kenner's niece, Jennifer Haynes, joins the group for the final leg as they travel to a remote island in the Solomon Islands to stop the ELF's pièce de résistance, a tsunami that will inundate the California coastline just as Drake is winding up the international conference on the "catastrophe" of global warming. Along the way, the group battles man-eating crocodiles and cannibalistic tribesmen (who feast on Ted Bradley, an environmentalist TV actor whom Drake had sent to spy on Kenner and his team). The rest of the group is rescued in the nick of time by Morton, who had previously faked his own death to throw Drake off the trail so that he could keep watch on the ELF's activities on the island while he waited for Kenner and his team to arrive. The group has a final confrontation with the elite ELF team on the island during which Haynes is almost killed, and Evans kills one of the terrorists who had previously tried to kill both him and Jones in Antarctica. The rest of the ELF team is killed by the backwash from their own tsunami, which Kenner and his team have sabotaged just enough to prevent it from becoming a full-size tsunami and reaching California. Morton, Evans, and Jones return to Los Angeles. Evans quits his law firm to work for Morton's new, as yet unnamed, organization, which will practice environmental activism as a business, free from potential conflicts of interest. Morton hopes Evans and Jones will take his place in the new organization after his death. Allegorical characters Several critics have suggested that Crichton uses the major characters as proxies for differing viewpoints on the topic of global warming in order to allow the reader to clearly follow the various positions portrayed in the book. Joseph Romm suggests that Kenner is a stand-in for Crichton himself. David Roberts suggests that Evans is the stand-in for the reader (who Crichton presumes accepts most of the tenets of global warming without any detailed study of it, but not unquestioningly). David Roberts also suggests that Ted Bradley is a stand-in for people who accept the "environmentalist" party line without question. Ronald Bailey suggests that Drake is a stand-in for the environmental movement "professional" activist. Bruce Barcott suggests that Jones, and Michael B. McElroy