INTERVIEW: Dr. Bonner Cohen

Dr. Bonner Cohen is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. He formerly headed EPA Watch which was a group that worked closely with the tobacco industry.

Dr. Cohen has lectured and participated in panels dealing with environmental issues in the United States and abroad and is a frequent commentator on television and radio programs. He was the editor for Environment & Climate News.

Bob McKeown: IS IT NOT REASONABLE TO BE SCEPTICAL OF ORGANIZATIONS LIKE APCO, LIKE THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOUND SCIENCE COALITION OR INDIVIDUALS WHO KEEP POPPING UP BOTH IN THE TOBACCO DEBATE AND NOW IN THE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE, LIKE FREDERICK SEITZ, OR FRED SINGER, IS IT NOT REASONABLE TO BE SCEPTICAL OF THEIR MOTIVES?

Dr. Bonner Cohen: No. I don't believe so at all. You should not attack their motives. You should concern yourselves with the valid, with their arguments.

If you start raising questions - where did the money come from, what are their motives - that's a wonderful way of avoiding the intellectual clash with their ideas.

Judge their ideas by their merits. If their ideas are not well-founded, or have holes in them, you can dismiss them for that reason or you can attack them for that reason.

If you, for instance, apply that standard to public debate, then you must go to the environmental groups which perhaps you have done in this program.

Bob McKeown: UH-HM -

Dr. Bonner Cohen: And you have gone to the foundations, the wealth of foundations. You ask yourself, well where did that money come from? And cui bono, who benefits, from the donations that those groups give to the environmental groups, you can do that if you wish.

A far better thing is simply to point out, do the views expressed by a spokesman for Greenpeace or the Sierra Club, or the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or some other think tank, what Mr. Seitz whom you cited, are those views well founded?

Are they compatible with the available data on global warming?