Koch Industries has “become a financial kingpin of climate science denial and clean energy opposition,” spending over $48.5 million since 1997 to fund the climate denial machine, according to an extensive report today by Greenpeace.
The Greenpeace report reveals how Koch Industries and the foundations under its control spent far more than even ExxonMobil in recent years to fund industry front groups opposed to clean energy and climate policies. Koch spent over half the total amount -nearly $25 million - funding climate denier groups from 2005 to 2008, a period in which Exxon only spent $8.9 million.
Greenpeace’s attempt to lift the veil of secrecy inherent to a private company like Koch Industries is no easy task. Because it remains privately owned, Koch faces few of the disclosure requirements designed to increase transparency among publicly-traded companies.
That intentional secrecy allows Koch Industries, the second-largest privately-held company in the United States, to fly largely below the public’s radar. Few Americans have likely heard of Koch, even though it operates crude oil refineries and pipelines across North America and owns such well-known consumer brands as Dixie cups, Brawny and Quilted Northern paper products, Stainmaster carpet, CoolMax and Lycra.
The company’s founder, Fred Koch, who once earned $5 million building oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s reign, was a co-founder of the libertarian John Birch Society. Charles G. and David H. Koch, two of Fred’s four sons, each now own 42% of the company’s stock. According to 2009 Forbes rankings, the Koch brothers are tied for the 19th-richest person in the world, and for ninth-richest American, each worth between $14 and $16 billion, more than George Soros or the founders of Google.
The Koch brothers use three foundations to spread Koch Industries’ influence, including support for roughly 40 organizations that doubt or downplay climate change or otherwise oppose policy solutions to build a clean energy future. Greenpeace also notes that Koch Industries has been the largest oil and gas industry contributor to electoral campaigns since the 2006 election cycle, and its done its fair share of lobbying as well. During the 2008 elections, Koch Industries contributed over $1.8 million, 88% to Republican candidates. Koch’s political action committee (PAC) also spent more than $2.5 million on contributions to federal candidates for that period, more than any other oil-and-gas sector PAC.
Koch Industries has bankrolled Americans for Prosperity to the tune of over $5 million since 2005. AFP – known primarily for its role in organizing the tea party movement in the U.S. – brought notorious climate denier Lord Christopher Monckton to the Copenhagen climate summit as its guest speaker. Despite Lord Monckton’s reprehensible behavior in Copenhagen – where he repeatedly compared college students advocating for a clean energy future to “Hitler Youth” and “Nazis” – Americans for Prosperity continues to host Monckton at its events in the United States, including a recent appearance in Wisconsin.
While in Wisconsin on AFP’s dime, Monckton booked a side gig at a GOP fundraiser where he described President Barack Obama as a “monster.” I wonder if David Koch – the second richest man in New York behind Michael Bloomberg - is even aware that Koch’s funding of AFP is in part providing support for Monckton to run around the world labeling American college students “Hitler Youth” and calling the President of the United States a “monster”?
Koch was also one of the funders of the 2007 polar bear junk science “study” authored by prominent climate deniers (including Sallie Baliunas, David Legates and Tim Ball) that claimed to prove that polar bear populations were not affected by anthropogenic climate disruption in the Arctic. Dr. Willie Soon, one of the non-peer-reviewed paper’s authors, disclosed in the acknowledgements section that he had received direct corporate funding for the work, stating “W. Soon’s effort for the completion of this paper was partially supported by grants from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.”
Although the paper was thoroughly debunked by actual experts on Arctic sea ice and polar bears, many of the front groups funded by Koch and Exxon rebroadcast the study widely, creating public confusion. The matter came to a head when Sarah Palin and her officers in the Alaskan government referenced the Soon/Baliunas polar bear paper before it was even published in Alaska’s formal protest of efforts to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Both Soon and Baliunas have served as spokespeople, advisors and/or board members of multiple Koch-funded climate denial groups over the past decade.
The Greenpeace report notes Koch’s role in funding the Institute for Energy Research, which was behind the Danish study that attacked the viability of wind power. Greenpeace also points out the role that Koch’s web of climate denier groups played in supporting, disseminating and promoting the Spanish study attacking green jobs, including AFP, IER and the Heritage Foundation.
Greenpeace has helped to shed some much-needed light on Koch Industries with this report, providing several case studies, a detailed look at lobbying and campaign expenditures, and other little known facts about the Koch Brothers’ web of front groups.
If you thought you knew everything about anti-science front groups from hearing about ExxonMobil’s efforts over the years, think again. This expose of Koch Industries serves up a heaping pile of unsavory evidence that the climate denial industry is alive and well-funded, even with the scaling back of ExxonMobil’s support.
More attention needs to be paid to Koch Industries, and this report will hopefully encourage deeper investigation into the Koch web’s confusion campaign.
Follow Brendan DeMelle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bdemelle
Here are Koch products that you can boycott: Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft bath tissues, Quilted Northern bath tissues, Soft ‘n Gentle bath tissues, CoolMax, Lycra, STAINMASTER Carpet, Dixie cups; paper plates and bowls; and napkins, Mardi Gras paper towels and napkins, Sparkle paper towels, Vanity Fair, and Zee napkins. Also, boycott other corporations that promote climate change denial.
Are not the goals of policies we would persue if climate change is real, exactly the same as what we should do for our economy and security and every other reason?
Lets just forget the whole climate change thing and concentrate on GETTING CLEAN AND RENEWABLE ENERGY and on conservation as the better path ahead eh?
Oh and by the way, the smart money says move away from the coasts, as all the world over, every ICE FIELD is melting away really quick.
http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus.htm
My understanding is that obtaining federal funds under *any* false pretense is a form of fraud that can be prosecuted as a felony, and all the major petroleum and coal companies in the country have *certainly* participated in that fraud via any and all financial contributions to sponsors of fake science.
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-22-fossil-fuel-subsidies-dwarf-clean-energy-subsidies-obama-wants
Last year Exxon hedged on their rear-guard action with a $600M investment on supposedly carbon-neutral, algae-based biofuel.
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_climate_con_vehicle_algae.aspx
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html
This suggests, a) Exxon may be slow and greedy, but they're not stupid. They've known for decades that fossil fuels DO warm our planet and burning it isn't sustainable indefinately. b) So, they've been seeking to retain dominance, even as petroleum production diminishes, due to climate concerns and peak oil (Note: concern over peaking oil is my inference. Their web site makes no mention of it). c) They think algal oil may be their ticket, as it's 10x more efficient and thus way cheaper to produce than by other means.
Direct quotes from Exxon's biofuel web site:
"Growing algae consume carbon dioxide; this PROVIDES GREENHOUSE GAS MITIGATION BENEFITS."
"Since 2004 we have invested more than $1.5 billion in activities that REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS and improve energy efficiency, and we will spend at least $500 million on additional initiatives over the next few years."
“At least use a forest green! Is this mint? It's making my eyes bug out.â€
Why would that comment have been removed? Maybe a technological problem caused by the new, horrible color scheme?
Where is the news here????.
You need to think and read the entire article before you post-
I hope maybe that this leads to coverage that concerns other issues as well,,, as corporations under the radar are all definitely involved in shaping public opinion with questionable opinions given by unqualified ppl paid especially to advance an agenda...
I believe the American ppl would be surprised at what our fellow citizens(corporations) have been doing over the years to twist the messages we've found ourselves agreeing with even when it wasn't in the ppls interest,,, and I wonder how long it will take corporate lawyers to start threatening the media outlets who may think about any follow ups...
I wonder how many military corporations do the same exact thing..
I guess that sorta counts as "media".
But you have to remember media is business and needs RATINGS to feed the pig(s).
Where will you put your advertising dollars?
On the show that has the weird woman stripping in dallas, or on the show that has a long intricate boring hard to understand story of corrupt practises that sound like just some more normal Repugnant activities?
This is and has been the most under reported yet incredibly relevant story the corporate owned media continues to ignore.
Kudos to Greenpeace! Now if only someone on the 'TV Machine' would take this story public.
Its completely under reported.
http://www.seashepherd.org/
What many people don't know that it is legal, under UN rules, to make those illegal whalers sink! No prosecution. We have been doing it the peaceful way for the last 40 years. It is time for a legal, aggressive approach!
Thanks Greenpeace for pointing this out good work as always!!!!!!!!!
“The focus on Professor Jones and CRU has been largely misplaced. On the accusations relating to Professor Jones’s refusal to share raw data and computer codes, the Committee considers that his actions were in line with common practice in the climate science community but that those practices need to change.
On the much cited phrases in the leaked e-mails—“trick†and “hiding the declineâ€â€”the Committee considers that they were colloquial terms used in private e-mails and the balance of evidence is that they were not part of a systematic attempt to mislead. Insofar as the Committee was able to consider accusations of dishonesty against CRU, the Committee considers that there is no case to answer.â€
Even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-hoggan/climate-scientist-phil-jo_b_519298.html
That's everything, bud. The only crime was the theft of data. Case closed, end of discussion.
But carbon dioxide is the anointed villain of the piece. It must really pack a punch, because CO2 only makes up 3.6% of greenhouse gases. And here’s the kicker, only 3% of the carbon dioxide—3% of the 3.6%—is man-made. This means .1% (one-tenth of one percent) is man-made CO2.
This, according to the harbingers of climate doom, is what is driving “climate catastrophe.†International conferences are called, governments allocate billions, and corporate PR departments gush over environmental agendas in a universal tsunami of green.
It’s as if someone had turned a programmed cult of global warming druids lose on the planet to shriek the horrors of carbon dioxide to a populace that doesn’t know or can’t confront the blatant lunacy of what they are saying.
And we in the plastics industry are doing our part by putting the word recyclable on all our products...
We're doing our part to LOOK environmental but we need you to meet us halfway and BELIEVE we're environmental, even when we lobby against pollution restrictions...
Because a clean ocean is a great photo op...
You can't spell greenwashing without green!"
The above is just highlights.... watch the vid...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLIbIdgrIaE
C.R.A.P.P.
Lol
FANNED!