Protesters Urge The Smithsonian Institution To Cut Ties With Koch Money
Protesters Urge The Smithsonian Institution To Cut Ties With Koch Money
by Natasha Geiling
Posted on June 15, 2015 at 4:48 pm
Updated: June 15, 2015 at 5:27 pm
CREDIT: Natasha Geiling
Protesters in Washington, D.C. gathered outside of the National Museum of Natural History on Monday, urging the Smithsonian Institution to cut ties with noted climate denier David Koch, who sits on the museum’s board.
“The fossil fuel industry is driving this train to the end of the Earth,” Beka Economopoulos, director of the mobile museum bus The Natural History Museum, told the crowd of protesters. “We need science museums to take a stand.”
The Smithsonian has come under fire for its association with the Koch brothers and its Hall of Human Origins exhibit, funded by a $15 million grant from David Koch. The exhibit centers on a relatively new hypothesis, based largely in speculation, that extreme climate change in the past made humans incredibly adaptable. It also claims that humans will continue to adapt to future extreme climate change, illustrating this idea with an interactive video that lets visitors create future humans that have adapted to warmer temperatures simply by growing taller or adding more sweat glands.
In March, three dozen scientists sent the Smithsonian an open letter urging the Institution to end their association with the Koch brothers or anyone else related to fossil fuels.
“This is our national museum,” Lise Van Susteren, co-founder of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and one of the event’s organizers, told ThinkProgress. “[The Hall of Human Origins] is such an insult to thinking people everywhere. It is such a disgrace and a shame that the Board of Regents has not done something to take this down.”
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/15/3669793/smithsonian-koch-exhibit-protest/
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