Yesterday, the Kochs announced that brother David, due to health reasons, would be stepping down from Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity. Unfortunately, that probably does not mean the vast network of Koch interests will stop trying to influence the public.
For example, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday carried on the Koch’s message--but, of course, without any disclosure of the Koch money behind its author. The piece by Steven Hayward argued that “climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue,” based on a handful of seemingly random reasons.
By way of introduction, Hayward seems like a ramblin’ man, having bounced around from Ashland University, Georgetown U, UC-Boulder, and Pepperdine. He is now a resident scholar at Berkeley where he co-teaches a course formerly taught by a grad student. While Hayward’s academic career has careened all over the place, he has been consistent in working with Koch affiliated groups. He was a fellow at the conspiracy theorist’s nightmare Mont Pelerin society, the Pacific Research Institute, Heritage, AEI, and is currently treasurer and on the board of directors at the dark money group Donors Capital.
Of course the WSJ doesn’t disclose to its readers that Hayward is a career Kocher, instead only listing his position at Berkeley. But the content of his op-ed advances the Koch party line that the left politicized climate change and now no one cares about it.
Hayward’s argument is, from the start, dumb. He claims climate is “no longer a pre-eminent policy issue,” and that now only “boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates” supports renewables. But, uh, doesn’t the fact that politicians are talking about it so often it’s boilerplate, and introducing bureaucratic mandates to fight it, kind of indicate that climate and clean energy still an issue?
Not to mention how the various #StillIn coalitions are only gaining in momentum, and how corporations are so terrified of those supposedly frivolous lawsuits that they’re launching projects to push back on them.
Then Hawyard blows an alt-right dog whistle by claiming the Paris Agreement’s inclusion of gender equality and intergenerational equity is “a good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over.” His second supposed proof point is how U-Washington climate scientist Sarah Myhre said that climate change can’t be addressed without also addressing misogyny. Myhre’s had plenty of experience dealing with trolls like Hayward, so instead of dealing with his attacks, we’ll just point out that an issue becoming elevated and intertwined with other salient issues that are part of the larger social zeitgeist is hardly a sign that it’s fading away.
Hayward concludes that the left politicized the climate issue-- apparently because certain climate funders didn’t pour money down the sinkhole of nuclear power--so it deserves to “die by politics.”
But as we all know, it wasn’t the left that used the campaign contribution possibilities opened by Citizens United to primary out Republican Bob Inglis in the 2010 election cycle for talking about climate change.
That was the Kochs. Who, unsurprisingly, Hayward has spent a career serving. As he, and others, will likely continue to for years to come, living out the Koch’s shameful legacy.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Story:
