Flint Hills, a wholly-owned subsidiary of oil giant Koch Industries based in Kansas, has joined with Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro in trying to block California's landmark climate legislation by funding the campaign to pass Proposition 23. As the second largest private company in the US, Koch Industries has plenty of money to pour into this fight.
In fact, the $1 million from the oil billionaires is only one tentacle of the oily Kochtopus. As we detailed in our report "
Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine," oil billionaires David and Charles Koch have become kingpins of climate denial, funneling tens of millions of dollars to front groups and think tanks that oppose climate and clean energy policies. In recent years, they have even surpassed ExxonMobil in contributions to climate denial organizations.
Those front-group-tentacles have also reached California. David Koch's favorite front group, "
Americans for Prosperity," is running TV ads promoting Proposition 23, and
AFP's California director has said that the Prop 23 is the group's "top priority." Although AFP purports to be a 'grassroots' organization, in fact it was founded and is co-chaired by David Koch, and, as our report shows, Koch Foundations have poured
more than $5 million into this front group. As David Axelrod told Jane Mayer of
The New Yorker in her extraordinary
investigative article exposing the Koch brothers, "What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
The Kochs are also
directly funding political candidates who will support their agenda — including California senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who supports Proposition 23. KochPAC gave her $5,000 earlier this year, and is even co-hosting a fundraiser for her in Washington DC to give thousands more.
The fight over clean energy and climate policy in California is dripping with out-of-state oil money because the oil billionaires want to stamp out the progress that has been made to move toward clean energy and energy efficiency, and keep us addicted to their fossil fuels. That's how they became oil billionaires, after all. The NYT editorial concludes:
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten