Commissioner Main, in a moment of total political obtuseness, revealed that he is a climate change denier and minutes later expressed his contempt for working with environmental groups because they might be too radical. Main lumped the Sierra Club, River Keepers and Earth First all in the same category.

Main’s postured request for an advisory vote on whether the county should partner with the Coquille Tribe failed for lack of a second by Messerle and Parry was absent. The commissioners are under no obligation to comply with the public in an advisory vote and a recent draft bill offers to give management of the Coos Bay Wagon Road lands to the county but makes no mention of the Coquille Tribe in the final draft version of the bill.

When asked why the county would need to partner with the tribe Main admitted that a co-management agreement with the tribe would cost the county money. The county forest timber management cost is only 10% and a partnership would cost the county up to an additional 40% of the gross.

Main’s denial of global warming is a consequence of a coordinated effort by the energy industry to sow seeds of doubt much like the tobacco industry tried to deny that cigarettes cause cancer. Climate denial is not based upon skepticism or sound scientific data but is rather a faith based belief.

Peter Christoff, writing in The Age (2007), said that climate change denial differs from skepticism, which is essential for good science. He went on to say that “almost two decades after the issue became one of global concern, the ‘big’ debate over climate change is over. There are now no credible scientific sceptics challenging the underlying scientific theory, or the broad projections, of climate change.”[13] The relationships between industry-funded denial and public climate change skepticism have at times been compared to earlier efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine what is now widely accepted scientific evidence relating to the dangers of secondhand smoke, or even linked as a direct continuation of these earlier financial relationships.[15] Aside from private industry groups, climate change denial has also been alleged regarding the statements of elected officials