Climate Change Deniers in Chief: Koch Bros.

Charles(L), David(R)

Discussed on this blog previously was information from Greenpeace about the role of the David H. Koch and his brother, Charles, in funding the political opposition to climate legislation {The Dirty Koch Empire, 1.4.10}. The role the billionaire Koch Bros. have played in bottling up climate legislation in the gridlocked Senate cannot be overstated. The founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan watchdog group in Washington, DC, said, "The Kochs are on a whole different level. There's no else who has spend this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart...They are the Standard Oil of our times." Since 1999 the fossil fuel industries and electrical utilities (powered primarily by coal) have spent over $2 billion lobbying Congress, twenty times more than the clean energy industry has spent.  Denying climate change is viewed as a vote getter in the upcoming mid-term election

The Koch brothers are also backing California state proposition 23 with a $1,000,000 donation to undo Assembly Bill 32 (the Global Warming Solutions Act) passed in 2006 to establish state limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The bill is a model for bi-partisan effort to reduced carbon emissions and was supported by a broad array of business, labor and environmental interests. The law has already resulted in the creation of green jobs, prompting 100 economists to sign a letter opposing any changes to AB 32.  But according to the hard-line libertarian Kochs[1], the bill is 'bad for business'.  Prop 23 seeks to suspend California's global warming law until the state unemployment rate falls below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters, a condition that has only occurred three times since 1976.

The Kochs, through privately owned Koch Industries[2] and numerous non-profit organizations[3] such as Americans for Prosperity Foundation, are the largest funders of climate change denial worldwide. The Prosperity Foundation created by David Koch has connections to the Tea Party movement according to Jane Mayer writing in The New Yorker magazine. Through the Tea Parties the Kochs have morphed their ultra-right private agenda into what the COM portrays to be a popular mass movement. David ran for Vice President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 to the right of Ronald Reagan, a move that allowed him to spend more than $2 million of his own money espousing a radical anti-government agenda, but the Libertarians received only 1% of the vote.

Tea partier labels Obama

The disabused Kochs thereafter decided to influence opinion makers, not voters. They set up the libertarian Cato Institute think-tank and funded it with $11 million between 1986 and 1993. Now an established part of the Washington policy infrastructure, its laissez-faire positions are widely respected by the COM. More recently, the brothers' efforts to create respected laissez-faire opinion have focused on George Mason University's Mercatus Center which promotes itself as "the world's premier university source for market oriented ideas". Public records show more than $30 million has been donated by the Kochs to George Mason University, a Virginia tax-funded institution. Of twenty-three regulations the Charlatan proposed to eliminate in his term of office, Mercatus associates first proposed 14 of them. To create the 'vertical integration' corporate heads are so fond of, the Koch Bros. political juggernaut has now taken its radical ideas to the street with the Tea Parties. Their message seems to be resonating with the beleaguered underclass: according to a recent poll, 55% of Americans think Obama is a socialist!

1. Fred Koch, father of David and Charles helped to found the ultra right-wing John Birch Society in the 1950s. Family history says Fred Koch was blacklisted by the US oil industry for having found a more efficient process to produce gasoline from oil. Fred Koch went to the Soviet Union to work where he helped set up Stalin's oil refineries. He was apparently radicalized by his experience during which several Soviet colleagues were purged. Charles is the recognized head of Koch Industries after an unfriendly struggle to control their father's company in which he and David bought out two other brothers for nearly a billion dollars. David is a prominent New York philanthropist whilst Charles leads a more private life at company headquarters in Wichita, Kansas. Both assimilated their father's ingrained distrust of governments. 
2. Koch Industries is rated the 10th worst air polluter in the United States by U Mass. Most of the donated money to oppose AB32 has come from the oil industry. Two Texas companies, Valero Energy and Tesoro Corp. along with Koch Industries have contributed more than $6.5 million of the total $8 million
3. From 1998 until 2008 tax records show the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation spent $48 million on political activity. The Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation controlled by Charles and his wife spent $28 million. The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation spent more than $120 million. David also contributes to PBS.