"Global-Warming Payola?"

JOHN TIERNEY takes on the issue of whether those who question environmental claims are doing so because they are getting paid off to do so. Tierney raises an example dealing with recycling.

Off the record, some of the executives would confide that recycling didn’t make economic sense to them, but they weren’t about to speak out against their profits — or hurt their reputations by opposing anything as popular as recycling. They were happy to join government agencies in giving money to recycling programs and environmental groups. If you wanted to sell out, there was a lot more money in going along with the majority. The few skeptics in academia and think tanks didn’t even have enough support to work full-time on the issue.

If readers insist on debating the pecuniary motives of scientists and their patrons, I’d be curious to see figures comparing how much money corporations, foundations and government agencies today give to global-warming skeptics versus how much they give to the other side. Again, I’m not suggesting that the researchers taking this money are corrupt, or that scientists will suppress the truth if it turns out the current prevailing view of climate change is wrong. If contradictions emerge, scientists will debate and revise their theories eventually. . . .

I have had similar experiences. When I was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission, I tried to get corporations and trade associations to testify before the Commission regarding higher environmental penalties, but no one was willing to testify even though they believed that the higher penalties were greater than the damage from the pollution. Companies that considered testifying were afraid that it would make them look like they were in favor of pollution. There were lots of people who were willing to testify for ever higher penalties.