The Koch Brothers used to fly far below the radar. Now their astounding
influence-buying and efforts to keep the U.S. from embracing climate-change
legislation have become more obvious. (photo: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images)
In Trump's Withdrawal From the Paris Accord, the Koch Brothers' Campaign
Becomes Overt
By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker
11 June 17
If there was any lingering doubt that a tiny clique of fossil-fuel barons
has captured America's energy and environmental policies, it was dispelled
last week, when the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris climate
accord. Surveys showed that a majority of Americans in literally every state
wanted to remain within the agreement, and news reports established that the
heads of many of the country's most successful and iconic Fortune 100
companies, from Disney to General Electric, did, too. Voters and big
business were arrayed against leaving the climate agreement. Yet despite the
majority's sentiment, a tiny-and until recently, almost faceless-minority
somehow prevailed.
How this happened is no longer a secret. The answer, as the New York Times
reported, on Sunday, is "a story of big political money." It is, perhaps,
the most astounding example of influence-buying in modern American political
history.
As the climate scientist Michael Mann put it to me in my book "Dark Money,"
when attempting to explain why the Republican Party has moved in the
opposite direction from virtually the rest of the world, "We are talking
about a direct challenge to the most powerful industry that has ever existed
on the face of the Earth. There's no depth to which they're unwilling to
sink to challenge anything threatening their interests." For most of the
world's population, the costs of inaction on climate change far outweigh
that of action. But for the fossil-fuel industry, he said, "It's like the
switch from whale oil in the nineteenth century. They're fighting to
maintain the status quo, no matter how dumb."
Until recently, those buying the fealty of the Republican Party on these
issues tried to hide their sway, manipulating politics from the wings. But
what became clear this past weekend is that they can remain anonymous no
longer. With their success dictating America's climate policy, the
fossil-fuel industry's political heavyweights have also won new notoriety.
Charles and David Koch, the billionaire owners of the Kansas-based
fossil-fuel leviathan Koch Industries, used to attract attention only from
environmental groups such as Greenpeace, which labelled them "the Kingpins
of Climate Denial." They were so secretive about their political activities
that, when I first wrote about their tactics in The New Yorker, in 2010, the
article was titled "Covert Operations." But now references to the Kochs are
becoming almost as commonplace as the Dixie Cups, Lycra, and other household
products that their business produces. As the Times noted, Republican
lawmakers' swerves to the right on climate issues "did not happen by
themselves. Republican lawmakers were moved along by a campaign carefully
crafted by fossil-fuel industry players, most notably Charles D. and David
H. Koch, the Kansas-based billionaires who run a chain of refineries. . . ."
The Kochs were called out on the Sunday talk shows this past weekend, too.
On ABC's "This Week," former Vice-President Al Gore cited "dark money" from
fossil-fuel companies as the explanation for Trump's withdrawal from the
Paris accord; on NBC's "Meet the Press," former Secretary of State John
Kerry specifically chastised the Kochs.
Now that they have been flushed from the shadows, the Kochs and their
political operatives have proudly taken credit for obstructing the U.S.
government from addressing climate change. Charles Koch, who is a hardcore
libertarian, has argued that government action was only "making people's
lives worse, rather than better," as he put it in an interview with Fortune
last year. Meanwhile, Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for
Prosperity, the Kochs' main political-advocacy organization, has boasted
about the group's success in killing the careers of politicians who broke
with the brothers' anti-climate-change agenda. Phillips recounted to the
Times that, after 2010, when the group spent tens of millions of dollars in
campaigns aimed at defeating congressmen who wanted to take action on
climate change, no Republican candidate has dared cross the Kochs on the
issue again. "After that," he said, support for renewable energy
"disappeared from Republican ads. Part of that was the polling, and part of
that was the visceral example of what happened to their colleagues who had
done that. . . . It told the Republicans that we were serious, that we would
spend some serious money against them."
President Trump may be the face of America's withdrawal from the Paris
climate accord, but, as deeper reporting is making clear, it's the Kochs and
their fellow fossil-fuel industry donors who really own the policy. Whether
responsibility for such a consequential move will redound to their favor
remains to be seen. But it's worth remembering that Fred Koch, Charles and
David's father and the founder of the family company, had a favorite
admonition. He warned his boys to keep a low profile and stay below the
surface, because, as he put it, "It's when the whale spouts that he gets
harpooned."
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