Our Global Warming Noose Is Cinched Tight With Koch Brothers' Money

[Triana]

The New Yorker made the Koch brothers famous for exposing their creation of the "grassroots" Tea Party movement, but a jaw-dropping new analysis of the billionaires' donations shows in detail how the Kochs have created their own simulacrum of society, with its own relentlessly pro-business, anti-regulation reality. The Kochs are essentially shortening the life span of the human race: the private foundations they fund work tirelessly to convince lawmakers that global warming is imaginary, and members of Congress who sign a pledge to look the other way on climate change are rewarded with campaign donations.

The pledge was created in 2008 by the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and those who sign it promise to not spend any money fighting global warming unless that money is "balanced" with tax cuts.

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While the pledge began with a marginal following, an energized turnout of conservative voters in the 2010 election swept 85 freshman Republicans into the House. Of those 85 Republicans, 76 signed the Koch pledge as candidates. And 57 of those 76 received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’ political action committee.

With the support of these newly elected Republicans, from 2011 to 2013, Congress passed increasingly smaller budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), attempted to strip the agency of varying regulatory powers and discouraged policies to address climate change across multiple federal agencies, according to the Workshop’s analysis.

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Koch puppets have testified before Congress about global warming six times in 2013 alone, most recently on May 7, when Paul Knappenberger of the Cato Institute told the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, "The more we learn, the less responsive it seems that the earth’s average temperature is to human carbon-dioxide emissions."

THE REST:

http://gothamist.com/2013/07/01/global_warming_noose_made_with_koch.php

[Johonny]

1. It is impossible to know if climate change will shorten the life span of the human race

but the evidence is overwhelming it is having profound effects on climate and the most likely scenario is it will continue to do so. Eventually the very same people that advocated doing nothing will blame the people advocating doing something for being alarmists and saying because of their alarmist nature we were unable to do anything. They are already doing it. These are greedy, stupid, narrow minded people and that they get more than their fair share of the popular press is depressing.