"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."
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."
On Twitter, HuffPost environmental
reporter Alexander Kaufman noted the irony of Koch dying as the effects of the
climate crisis the billionaire activist had a large hand in perpetuating
are being increasingly felt around the globe.
"He deployed his
stupendous fortune funding climate denial in the years when the science was
clear and there was still time to avert catastrophic warming," saidKaufman.
"He died as fires raged from the Amazon to the Arctic."
In a piece for Earther,
Brian Kahn wrote that
Koch and his brother's funding of the movement to obfuscate the costs of the
climate crisis made them even more than the "arch-villains" they were
from funding other right-wing causes. And, said Kahn, David Koch now gets to
avoid the consequences of his actions.
"Climate change is a form
of violence that will largely affect people with little power to address it or
relatively little role in creating it," wrote Kahn. "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."
Koch's libertarianism led him
to take some positions—such as his support of gay marriage and opposition to
the war on drugs—that might make his legacy seem mixed. But, as media critic
Adam Johnson pointed
out, that's "trivial" in the context of Koch's full record.
"People will try to be
nice and note David Koch opposed the war on drugs/militarism," Johnson
tweeted, "but the money he gave opposing these twin evils was trivial
compared to the funds he gave supporting candidates that backed the war on
drugs/militarism and the related ideology of starving poor people."
The Koch borthers' reported
antipathy to President Donald Trump, Jack Mirkinson wrote at Splinter,
was hardly enough to offset the damage they did by promoting the Republican
Party.
"The Kochs were not happy
with everything Donald Trump did, but that is a low standard for anyone walking
the planet—and anyway, they loved his tax plan," wrote Mirkinson.
The Intercept's Mehdi
Hasan said on
Twitter that Koch will be remembered in the short term for his wealth,
philanthropy, and work to advance right-wing causes. But, Hasan said, that
pales in comparison to his rolse as a "climate denier."
"That'll be his long-term
legacy," said Hasan, "funding the effort to downplay an existential
threat to all of us."
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