Koch Industries Funding Climate Science Denial Front Groups
By Rebel Siren for The Disinformation Directory
It's no wonder there is such rampant denial and a propagandized "debate" in the mainstream. Dirty deeds obfuscate the truth to keep us confused and in the dark in order for big polluters to keep on polluting without any responsibility to humanity or the environment.
Koch Industries and the Koch family spend millions of dollars on lobbyists to fight climate and energy legislation, millions more on politicians, and still more millions on organizations denying climate change. Through the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation as well as Koch Industries and the other Koch family foundations, numerous and substantial donations go to organizations that deny, skepticize or belittle the significance of global warming. Compared to ExxonMobil, which has spent over $27.4 million on skeptic groups since 1998, foundations linked to Koch Industries have spent over $70 million in traceable contributions to the same network of organizations, with addition untraceable funding funnelled through organizations like Donors Trust. Key Koch-backed organizations include the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, which was founded and remains chaired by David Koch, the Cato Institute, which Charles Koch co-founded and David Koch remains a board member after an attempted coup, the Institute for Humane Studies, which is chaired by Charles Koch, and the Reason Foundation, of which David Koch is a trustee.
Koch Industries is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and part of ALEC's Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force. Through ALEC, Koch works with state legislators to distribute anti-environmental model bills across the country that delay policy solutions to climate change, block clean energy, prevent EPA from regulating coal pollution, fasttrack coal mining projects and other dirty energy initiatives. Koch's support for ALEC is unique; Charles Koch helped bail ALEC out during financial trouble in the late 1990s; Koch lobbyist Mike Morgan has severed on ALEC's private enterprise board for over a decade (see PR Watch references, paragraph 6).Koch Industries was the 2011 inductee for Corporate Accountability International's Corporate Hall of Shame for "spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial and influencing the Supreme Court's decision to allow unlimited corporate dollars to flow into federal elections." Koch Industries is the sixth member of the Hall of Shame, after Monsanto, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Blackwater and Halliburton.
Watch the short video below for an accurate synopsis of the Koch brothers' dirty deeds.
References
Koch Brothers Bankroll Attacks On Climate Change Science and Policy – climatesciencewatch.org
"While ExxonMobil has drawn much attention for its patronage of global warming denialist activity by such groups, much less public attention has been paid to the activities of the multibillionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries. Koch Industries is the second largest private company in the U.S., with estimated 2008 revenues of $100 billion. Started as a petroleum business by their father Fred Koch, who was also a founder of the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, Koch Industries has become a diversified enterprise that funds large-scale lobbying and a range of libertarian policy and activist groups that play a significant role in the global warming denial machine."
Senator James Inhofe Funded By Big Oil
If company sponsored PACs were combined with employee contributions, Koch Industries would be Inhofe's largest contributor, with $90,950 according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Marc Morano Is Climate Denial Propagandist For The Heartland Institute and Senator Inhofe
Morano was the communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) from 2006 to 2009, the minority chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Prior to the last election, Inhofe was the majority chair of the EPW committee.
All who who had a hand in this mess should go to jail, when all this comes to light. The proof is all around you, all you have to do is go out side and have a look around, bees,trees, butter flies, the spraying in the skies,all send a message to the hart and soul. These people all have names and adresses, and when the shit hits the fan, they where warned. Why so manny cowards is beon me.time will catch up with them the movement grows bigger ervery day. People need to start comming clean before its there ass that is being chewed.
To "Mollie Norris" in comments: to impugn the incomparable work of Mr. Wigington and the vast array of high-caliber science reported herein on account of this one video is sophomoric at best and just plain ignorant at worst. I couldn't care less what your personal agenda is or what the latest score is in the Soros vs. Koch ballgame of 527 contributions. This is so far removed from relevance to the critical issue at hand, that I find your comments laughable and sad, all at the same time. Please spare us any future comments, thank you.
Meanwhile, our planet is in meltdown regardless of all the wrangling and phony controversy surrounding global warming. We shall soon see the truths so abundantly reported herein, become inarguably self-evident. "When you argue with a fool, it's hard to tell the difference."
It just keeps getting more and more ridiculous, from states outlawing the use of the wording 'climate change' to Sen. Inhofe's latest rant on how good CO2 is for us and for the planet. Evidently most members of Congress are on the take, under the table so to speak, otherwise some member (with a conscience) would have stood up and asked for a more detailed report about just how CO2 is improving our health and our lives and the lives of our children, But, then, our Congress hasn't been too much interested in the lives of their constituents, what they think or what they feel for quite some time.
Disinformation [see next comment]? Not at all. But it does leave out a huge part of the story. That is that the "leftist" groups vilified in the comment below are a part of the same money-making machine. Are Soros and the Koch brothers on opposite sides of a single fence? No! They are together up on a platform somewhere, watching those of us down below fight and bicker over which side of the fabricated fence one should be on.
The brilliance of this divide-and-conquer scheme is not the Koch contribution, it's the Soros/Gore element: expose the (very real) problem, and then propose ineffective, morally repugnant legislation which only an idiot would think helpful – things like carbon credits. I know some very highly educated idiots (HEIs) who think that letting the market do its magic is going to stop corporations and us from polluting. Of course, they are idiotic enough to believe that they, too, are above the masses, that they are standing with Bill Gates, when in reality they are being sprayed by Bill Gates (and friends). Bill is up on the platform, too.
That us is italicized because it is the single biggest impediment to getting people to face climate change: too many of us are unwilling to accept our personal responsibility. "Exxon caused that oil spill [but fine by me, if it means I can fill my gas tank for less]" and "Bush/Clinton/Obama led us into that war [ditto]." One HEI who works as an environmental consultant leaves her lights and computer on when she travels (which she does frequently, always by plane), and her home heated to 72 degrees, and so on, and sees herself as part of the solution…
The Us vs Them paradigm is so outdated, so destructive, and so… idiotic. We are all on this planet together. Even the so-called elite (meaning the supreme idiots?) are stuck here. Maybe they believe they can rocket off to another planet (when pigs fly, pun intended), or that they can survive underground forever (453 nuke plants melting down on the surface, no one will ever emerge from a bunker). I am quite confident that if they outlive the "masses", their depraved nature will dictate that they turn on each other.
As for We the Peons, we are letting ourselves be manipulated by morons, for the sake of maintaining our material comfort. It infuriates me! We place ourselves willingly into one camp or another, and take aim at those who are not the enemy. Even people who know that the political system is broken and that it's a blatant lie that there are 2 separate parties dominating it, will check "independent" on the voter registration form, then go and align themselves with some other divisive and usually meaningless entity, be it celebrity or religion or brand name or movement.
Meanwhile, as we kill each other off, we are killing the planet even more quickly and surely. And one way in which we are doing that, is by converting its constituents into toxic chemical waste.
The greenhouse effect is simple to understand; it explains conditions on Venus; it allows for life here on Earth. I remember studying it way back when Al Gore was still in college, too. And we learned, way back when carbon credits were just a gleam in some capitalist creep's eye, that the increase in CO2 due to industrialization is a threat to the planet's life systems. You know the saying, too much of a good thing can kill you. Well, that goes for the greenhouse effect, too. Like it or not. I am really sick of hearing that CO2 is good!, it's necessary for plant life! Oxygen is necessary for human respiration, but if we had too much of it, it would kill us. The key is balance. It isn't complicated. One aspirin, your headache is gone; 30 and you're gone.
As Dane has repeatedly said, and as the "technical information" demonstrates, the planet is heating up. Rapidly. Inexorably. We need to deal with it.
Soros is only one of the many funders of left-wing and environmental organizations, and Soros alone contributes 22 times as much as the Kochs. This disinfo unfortunately ignores the constant frauds perpetrated by US government climate agencies, government funded academic institutions and the UN, and is an impediment to real environmentalism based on real science. Individual donations to 527 organizations (2001 to 2010) George Soros: $32.5 million Koch Brothers: $1.5 million So-called 527 groups are non-profit, tax-exempt organizations that are allowed to raise money for political activities including voter mobilization efforts, issue advocacy and other actions. They are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations and unions. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/opensecrets-battle-koch-brothers/
A web site that feeds disinfo is the suspicious observer by Ben
Davidson.They feed a little truth coating their disinfo..