Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumDeath and destruction: this is David Koch's sad legacy
The Guardian
August 27, 2019
By Alex Kotch
Anarcho-capitalism was the real cancer plaguing the billionaire libertarian. And it spread across universities, halls of Congress and the White House
...Koch Industries, a private company, is the United States 17th-largest producer of greenhouse gases and the 13th-biggest water polluter, according to research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst - ahead of oil giants Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum and Phillips 66. The conglomerate has committed hundreds of environmental, workplace safety, labor and other violations. It allegedly stole oil from Indian reservations, won business in foreign countries with bribery, and one of its crumbling butane pipelines killed two teenagers, resulting in a nearly $300m wrongful death settlement. The dangerous methane leakage, carbon emissions, chemical spills and other environmental injustices enacted by Kochs companies have imperiled the planet and allegedly brought cancer to many people. But it took Kochs own struggle with the disease for him to care about cancer and fund research to combat it.
...Not only did Koch help unleash countless metric tons of greenhouse gases from the earth, he was a key funder of climate change denialism, stiff-arming scientists in order to further plunder the earth he was destroying. Revelations in Christopher Leonards new book, Kochland, show that Koch played an even greater role in funding climate change denialism than we previously knew. As we careen towards a climate catastrophe that seems more and more likely to happen within the next 11 years, we can rightly pin a portion of the blame on David and his brother.
...David Koch died as the eleventh-richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $51 billion. His name is plastered on the facades of New England cancer centers and Manhattan hospitals and performance halls. But these historical imprints are temporary and relatively inconsequential compared to his lasting legacy, something far more significant, and terrifying. Kochs never-ending quest for obscene wealth no matter the consequence and that of his brother, his fellow oligarchs and his political allies will be part of every future climate change-intensified weather disaster; every city undone by catastrophic sea level rise; every animal species that goes extinct because of warmer waters, desertification, or biblical floods; and every desperate climate refugee.
Death and destruction. That is David Kochs legacy.
Worth the whole read. The Koch name will be a curse to future generations.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/27/death-destruction-david-koch-legacy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other