This week was all about the Kochs.

Drawing from a major new archive on the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers, Sharon Kelly explains how its documents help illuminate the origin story for Charles and David Kochs' powerful network of influence.

DeSmog also launched a new research tool, the Koch Network Database, to profile the dozens of organizations and individuals linked to Charles Koch or other members of the Koch family, Koch Industries, and related entities.

The Koch political network includes a wide range of groups working to spread the Kochs’ free market vision on a range of civic issues, which includes fighting against regulations on carbon emissions and denying the existence or seriousness of man-made climate change.

Now, you can find this network’s members and activities, all in one place. We have around 50 profiles to start and many more to come. Please let us know if you have any information or documents to contribute.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: [email protected].

Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

 

P.S. Be sure to also check out KochDocs.org, an extensive archive featuring troves of original Koch documents, hundreds of tax filings, and more.

By Sharon Kelly (8 min. read)

A scheme to abolish the Department of Energy (DOE) helped spur a failed 1980 Libertarian Party presidential bid — and in the process laid the groundwork for Charles and David Koch's powerful network of influence — as documents from a newly published archive show.

The documents in the new KochDocs.org archive include a relatively little-noticed column penned by fossil fuel industrialist Charles Koch for the Libertarian Review in August 1977, in which Charles, who had served as a member of President Carter’s energy task force in 1976, argued against Carter’s energy policy, writing that the “only ‘certainty’ to be associated with governmental planning is that it will not work, will tend to produce results opposite to those intended, and will doom any substantial private long-range planning in energy development.” Read more.

By Brendan DeMelle (2 min. read)

The Koch Network Database is a new resource library built by DeSmog to assist journalists, academic researchers, and the public to learn more about the backgrounds of individuals and organizations associated with billionaire fossil fuel industrialists Charles Koch and David Koch's free market approach to a broad spectrum of civic issues.

The Koch Network Database will chronicle the historical and present deeds and quotes associated with the people and organizations that have helped to advance the Kochs' free market approach to environmental regulations, and the subsequent consequences of such approaches for climate change, public health, and democracy. Read more.

By Justin Mikulka (5 min. read)

In early 2018 when major financial publications like the Wall Street Journal were predicting a bright and profitable future for the fracking industry, DeSmog began a series detailing the failing business model of fracking shale deposits for oil and gas in America.

Over a year later, the fracking industry is having to reckon with many of the issues DeSmog highlighted, in addition to one new issue — investors are finally giving up on the industry. Read more.

By Jocelyn Timperley (6 min. read)

After a three year wait, the UN’s official scientific advisory panel’s verdict on land and climate is here. The report is about as glum as you might have come to expect from a body tasked with documenting humanity’s ongoing descent into climate-induced havoc.

The UN is right to highlight the crucial importance of land in both causing and curbing climate change — it has been neglected for far too long. In particular, the report’s conclusions on just how much our current food system threatens the climate, as well as how much climate impacts threaten our food supply, need a huge and sustained conversation. Read more.

By Sharon Kelly (7 min. read)

On August 1, for the third time in as many years, Enbridge's Texas Eastern Transmission gas pipeline exploded. This tragic incident in central Kentucky killed a 58-year-old woman, Lisa Denise Derringer, and injured at least five others. Flames towered 300 feet high when the 30-inch diameter pipe ruptured at 1 a.m. and forced at least 75 people to evacuate.

“We opened the backdoor and it was like a tornado of fire going around and around and he said we were trapped,” survivor Jodie Coulter, 53, told CBS News, describing her efforts to flee on foot. Coulter, whose house was within 600 feet of the pipeline, suffered third-degree burns on her arms. “It felt like we were standing next to a blow torch.” Read more.

By Tara Lohan, The Revelator (7 min. read)

More than 1,500 scientific studies on the health and climate impacts of fracking prove its dangerous effect on communities, wildlife and nature.

In 2010 when I first started writing about hydraulic fracturing — the process of blasting a cocktail of water and chemicals into shale to release trapped hydrocarbons — there were more questions than answers about environmental and public-health threats. That same year Josh Fox’s documentary Gasland, which featured tap water bursting into flames, grabbed the public’s attention. Suddenly the term fracking — little known outside the oil and gas industry — became common parlance. Read more.

David Koch, along with his brother Charles, is a co-owner of Koch Industries, America’s second-largest private company, spanning a range of industries including petroleum, mining, and fertilizers. The Koch brothers created a large number of right-wing groups and have funneled millions of dollars into an extensive political network. That network was first dubbed “the Kochtopus” by some Libertarians in the late 1970s. David Koch was Ed Clark’s running mate in the Libertarian Party’s 1980 presidential campaign, which promoted abolishing the newly established Department of Energy, Sharon Kelly reports.

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database or our new Koch Network Database.