After Life of Incalculable Harm, Billionaire Climate Denialist and Right-Wing Villain David Koch Dea [View all]

[babylonsister]

Friday, August 23, 2019
After Life of Incalculable Harm, Billionaire Climate Denialist and Right-Wing Villain David Koch Dead at 79
"Death is an escape hatch for David Koch while the rest of us are left scrambling for the emergency brake before we go over the cliff."
byEoin Higgins, staff writer


Billionaire industrialist David Koch, who spent vast sums of his billions in personal fortune promoting climate denialism and other right wing causes over the last four decades, died Friday at 79.

His legacy in modern American politics was summed up by The New York Times:

Three decades after David Koch's public steps into politics, analysts say, the Koch brothers' money-fueled brand of libertarianism helped give rise to the Tea Party movement and strengthened the far-right wing of a resurgent Republican Party.

Koch was a controversial figure. His vast fortune—made in large part through fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing, though the company has interests in nearly everything—made him and his brother Charles two of the richest people in the world. The brothers spent at least $100 million since the 1970s promoting right-wing causes, and David ran for vice president as a member of the Libertarian Party in 1980.

One of the causes Koch dumped his fortune into promoting was climate crisis denialism.

By making vast sums of money from destroying the planet and then fighting against efforts to stem the flow of the crisis, tweeted Native American activist Tara Houska, Koch was a double damage denialist.

"Let's not forget the massive network of oil pipelines, refineries, and fossil fuel expansion projects that David Koch was directly responsible for," said Houska. "He funded climate deniers while he contributed to climate change, in the range of a 300 million ton carbon footprint annually."

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/23/after-life-incalculable-harm-billionaire-climate-denialist-and-right-wing-villain