Charles Koch Admits Climate Change is Happening, Then Denies the Problem

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As the nation warily watches every Republican presidential candidate kiss the ring of billionaire donor Charles Koch for a shot at his network’s $300,000,000 pool of presidential cash, Charles Koch did something unusual. Last week’s USA Today interview with Charles Koch noted his shifting opinion on what he calls climate changeย โ€œhysteria:โ€

For the record, Koch says this of climate change: โ€œYou can plausibly say that CO2 has contributedโ€ to the planet’s warming, but he sees โ€œno evidenceโ€ to support โ€œthis theory that it’s going to be catastrophic.โ€

Waitโ€ฆCharles Koch just accepted that the planet is warming? Hold yourย applause.

Clearly, Mr. Koch still denies that there’s a problem – which means he’s missing the entire point of discussing climate change. Butย any movement from Charles on the 5 Stages of Climate Denialโ€“from #1 down to #3โ€“is a big deal. This is the same guy who has poured $80 million into organizations that have misrepresented climate change science to the public and advocated against any viable solutions to theย problem.

Koch’s Right-Hand-Man: โ€œCharles is ahead of me onย this.โ€

Last June, leaked recordings surfaced from Koch’sย regular meeting of millionaires and billionaires who are coordinating $889 million in spending around the 2016 election. Charles’s Koch top strategist Richard Fink indicated that we may see a shift in Koch’s rhetoric on climate change. Fink, aka โ€œCharles Koch’s Brain,โ€ told attending prospective donors what they wanted to hear: donate to us, and we’ll fight the crazy commie hippies and their pesky science. From the Undercurrent:

โ€œThe environmental movement. Occupy Wall Street. These kids are searching for meaning. They’re protesting the 1 percent. They are the 1 percent, but they’re protesting the 1 percent. The environmental movement and climate change. It’s not about climate change. I studied climate change for six years. I can’t figure it out, quite frankly. Charles is ahead of me on this. I’m not a climatologist, but I’m not completely stupid. I can tell you I meet with people, particularly in California, that are convinced the world is going to burn up in you know, a year or two. They don’t know the answer โ€“ they don’t even know the question, because it’s not about climate change. It’s about a cause. It gives their life meaning.โ€

For context, you should probably know that Fink told the room’s billionaires that the minimum wage would lead to fascism, comparing today’s low-income Americans to pre-Nazi Germany citizenry. Not exactly a room full of academics. And since one of the people that Mr. Fink ‘meets with’ was a scientist that he funded to study global temperature data, you have to wonder how much experience Rich Fink has with willfulย ignorance.

When Charles Koch Accidentally Proved Globalย Warming

Charles Koch cannot deny is that he’s seen the global temperature record data. In 2011, through theย Charles Koch Foundation (CKF), CKF president Richard Fink funded a high-profile study on global surface temperature data. This dataset, which was an unnecessarily redundantย reproduction of several other similar studies, was constructed by a scientist who at the time was a climate changeย denier.

BEST data compared with previous reconstructions of global surface temperatureย data.

Dr. Richard Muller’s Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Study (BEST)ย made headlines when he announced his acceptance of what climate scientists had already been saying for over 15 yearsโ€“yes, people are responsible for unnatural climate variability that scientists have documentedโ€“and surprised the country by becoming an advocate for solutions to globalย warming.

This put Mr. Koch in an awkward spot. Koch’s $150,000 grant to Dr. Muller made him the project’s top single donor, and Muller was a celebrated skeptic before his dramaticย change-of-heart.

Add to that Mr. Koch’s background in scienceโ€“a chemical engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For such an educated, celebrated albeit controversial high-society businessman, the refusal to acknowledge science that is understood by middle schoolers guaranteed to undermine the sensible reputation that Koch Industries has spent a lot of money to put outย there.

But Charles gets no credit here. Dumping almost $80 million into organizations that have attacked the scientists who study climate change and interfered with virtually every proposed policy and regulation to solve global warming isn’t being a science-savy CEO. It’s being a denier, and especially in the context of a self-serving petrochemical billionaire, that’s pretty offensive to the rest ofย us.

We define climate change denial as โ€œanyone who is obstructing, delaying or trying to derail policy steps that are in line with the scientific consensus that says we need to take rapid steps to decarbonize the economy.โ€ย Mr. Koch remains a staunch denier in thatย regard.

The Koch brothers continue to finance campaigns to make Americans doubt the seriousness of global warming,ย increasingly hiding moneyย through nonprofits likeย DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.

Why focus on Charles Koch and David Koch? Many large foundations associated with corporate fortunes are active inย financing climate denial groupsย – Anschutz,ย Bradley,ย Coors, DeVos, Dunn, Howard, Pope,ย Scaife,ย Searle, and Seid, to name a few. Unlike Koch, most of those fortunes did not come from owning a corporation like Koch Industries, historically rooted in fossil fuel operations. And none come as close as the Kochs in terms of decades-long focus on activelyย building a political influence networkย andย coordinatingย other wealthy executives, corporations and families to dump amounts money into politics that not even the Koch brothers couldย afford.

Check out Greenpeace.org for more research on the Koch brothers crusade against climate science.

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Connor Gibson is a researcher for Greenpeace USA and a guest author for DeSmogBlog. He focuses on polluting industries, their front groups and PR operatives. He specializes in tracking those who professionally deny climate change science and obstruct policy solutions to global warming. Connor Gibson is based in Washington, DC.

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