Elliott Negin, Senior Writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Elliott was UCS media director from 2007 through 2011 and now writes about UCS-related topics for a range of news organizations including:. A contributing writer at HuffPost from 2011 through 2017, he has also written articles and columns for Alternet, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, EcoWatch, The Hill, Live Science, Mother Earth News, The Nation, The Progressive, Roll Call, Salon, Scientific American, The Washington Post and other publications. Prior to joining UCS, Elliott was the Washington communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a foreign news editor at National Public Radio, the managing editor of American Journalism Review, and the editor of Nuclear Times and Public Citizen magazines. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
We have invited Elliott to talk about two recent articles – one on ALEC and its funding and one on the long history of Charles Koch funding climate denial and climate disinformation efforts and how this impacts the ability to fund necessary climate change.
In the course of the episode, Elliott encourages listeners to learn more by reading the following works, or about the following topics:
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Elliott Negin, Senior Writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Elliott was UCS media director from 2007 through 2011 and now writes about UCS-related topics for a range of news organizations including:. A contributing writer at HuffPost from 2011 through 2017, he has also written articles and columns for Alternet, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, EcoWatch, The Hill, Live Science, Mother Earth News, The Nation, The Progressive, Roll Call, Salon, Scientific American, The Washington Post and other publications. Prior to joining UCS, Elliott was the Washington communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a foreign news editor at National Public Radio, the managing editor of American Journalism Review, and the editor of Nuclear Times and Public Citizen magazines. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
We have invited Elliott to talk about two recent articles – one on ALEC and its funding and one on the long history of Charles Koch funding climate denial and climate disinformation efforts and how this impacts the ability to fund necessary climate change.
In the course of the episode, Elliott encourages listeners to learn more by reading the following works, or about the following topics:
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
Thank you for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog. We're a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that wants to see the federal government get the biggest possible bang for every buck we spend on climate change mitigation, and environmental protection. My co host is Dina razor who founded the project on government oversight, or Pogo back in the 1980s to similarly expose waste, fraud and abuse in US military spending. Dina gave me my first job out of college over 30 years ago at Pogo. And with spending on climate mitigation approaching and likely exceeding the magnitude of the money we spent on the military in the Cold War. DNA approached me to form climate money watchdog to apply the same kind of investigative techniques to look for waste, fraud and abuse and climate spending. Fortunately, Dean is unavailable to join us tonight. So it'll be just me and our guest, Elliot Negan, a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Elliot was UCS media director from 2007 to 2011. And now writes about Union of Concerned Scientists related topics for a wide range of news organizations, including HuffPost alternate, the Atlantic, scientific, American, and many others. Prior to joining UCS, Eliot was the Washington communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the news editor at National Public Radio. The reason we've asked Elliot to join us tonight is mostly to talk about two articles he's written recently. One of them about Charles Koch, and how the the money he contributes to political campaign plays an important role and in continuing myths about climate change or the absence of climate change. And then another article about the American Legislative Exchange Council or Alec, which similarly handles a lot of money, both from the Koch from Charles Koch and others, and also disseminates a lot of misinformation about climate change and integrate any other things. Elliot, is there anything else you'd like to say about yourself before we get started?
Elliott Negin:No, I think you've covered the waterfront.
Greg Williams:So the title of the article about Charles Koch is great title. It's it's time to put Charles Koch under oath for his climate lies. And it talks about how, let's say more recognizable petrochemical companies have been called before Congress to testify under oath about what they've what their organizations have known and said about climate change. But coke seems to fly below the radar and escaped that kind of scrutiny. And I think it's worth asking why.
Elliott Negin:Well, what I was referencing in that headline was the House Oversight and Reform Committee launched an investigation last year into the fossil fuel industries climate disinformation campaign, which has been going on for more than two decades. And in late October, the committee invited top executives from for oil companies, BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and shell to testify under oath at a hearing it took place in late October. And I had a follow up. This was a follow up I did, asking the committee or telling the committee that if it really wants to get to the bottom of the climate disinformation campaign, they need to haul in Charles Koch for questioning because Charles Koch and his brother David, who died in 2019, have spent infinitely more to spread disinformation, about climate change than the four companies put together. So, indeed, Charles Koch, I like to call him the Daddy Warbucks of climate disinformation. He's got very deep pockets, he and his brother, very deep pockets and over the last two decades have spent more than $170 million on denier on to, to think tanks and advocacy groups. Who then peddle this information in, in the press on Capitol Hill, and confuse the public about the reality and seriousness of climate change. Their argument has gotten less and less persuasive in recent years, given what we've been seeing happening with extreme weather events around the country and around the world. And so in many cases, they've actually backpedaled. And what they do now is they attack a climate solutions by saying they'll be too expensive, and belittle or denigrate solutions like renewables, electric vehicles, and whatnot, they changed their tactics, but they're still out there still being paid by Charles Koch and others, to hold back any progress, which would basically under undermine profits, the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
Greg Williams:So I think it's interesting that, you know, he's claiming that climate, climate change solutions can be expensive. I mean, one of our interests, Dina and I, that is that there are some very expensive proposed solutions to climate change, whether it's carbon capture and storage, or hydrogen based technologies that are in fact, very, very expensive. And at the same time, there are things like simple changes to farming techniques, rooftop solar, and whatnot that are increasingly obviously economically viable. So I think it's a it's a great example of, sort of, using a grain of truth to to hide a much bigger lie. So I know that for a while, cokes position was look nice, he's not denying that the climate change exists, but he's not quite sure that it's the result of, of human activity, and therefore not so sure that human activity can can reverse it. And that position sort of fell apart a few years ago, when he funded a group of scientists to do their own study on on climate change. And you want to talk about what the what conclusions they reached,
Elliott Negin:sure. Back in, in about 10 years ago, when Charles Koch controls a number of foundations, and then he changes their names and dissolves them and starts new. And so it's kind of hard to follow exactly what his foundations are doing. But the Charles Koch, a Charles Koch Foundation, gave $150,000 to a scientist, who is a self described climate cept slightly self described climate skeptic. He's a physicist named Richard Mueller. And Richard Muller has a nonprofit research institute called the Burt called Berkeley Earth. And the Koch Foundation gave him $150,000 to review temperature data that underpins global warming assertions. And so the result was not what coke apparently expected. In the summer of 2012, Muller announced that its investigation had verified that global warming is indeed real, that it's, quote, almost entirely unquote caused by human activity, namely burning fossil fuels. And is even worse than what the climate science community had concluded at the time. You would have I mean, Koch didn't take these findings to heart. And in fact, after Muller announced its findings, the Koch network stepped up its campaign to argue that it would be too expensive to adopt policies to combat combat climate change. Despite the fact that the consequences of failing to address climate change would cost infinitely more. So yeah, Coke decided that he would give money to this particular physicist who wind up verifying what we all knew. We all knew even years before.
Greg Williams:And what happened to is level of financial support for that organization in the wake of those findings.
Elliott Negin:As far as I know that Muller didn't give me more money from coke. But what's interesting is that three years after Muller announced its his findings, which was in the summer of 2012. In 2015, Koch did an interview with the Washington Post And he falsely, sorry coke falsely complained as sorry. Coke falsely claimed that there was a debate over the temperature data exactly what Muller debunked. So three years after Muller comes up with his findings, Coke says the exact opposite interview with the Washington Post.
Greg Williams:So this ties back to the interest in getting him to speak under oath, where knowingly propagating falsehoods comes with more severe consequences.
Elliott Negin:Well, yes, and no, I mean, if you go back and rewatch the hearing that happened at the end of October, you'll see and I wrote an article about that. And I went in and I critiqued what the CEOs from the for oil companies said. They were they hemmed in, they were asked by Chairman Maloney as to whether they thought that climate change poses an existential threat. And they all said yes, but then they all said that they acknowledge that fossil fuels contributes to climate change, which, which suggests that there are other things that are perhaps more more important or more of a cause of that they can treat that fossil fuels contribute. So they were weaselly about the way they talked about it. They downplay the role that fossil fuels play when it comes to climate change. Who knows what coke would say. But they can at least the different and the difference between the four CEOs who showed up from BP, Chevron shell and Exxon Mobil is that they've all been saying they're actually trying to do something about it, when that's a questionable assertion, but Koch has never ever said that climate change is a serious problem. And nor is he ever said that Koch Industries is going to do something about it.
Greg Williams:While at the same time, he's at least begun diversifying Koch Industries into some areas that would help climate change,
Elliott Negin:or help combat climate change. Right. Yeah. It's yeah, it's kind of a surprise. I did some research, obviously, when I before I wrote this article, and I found that coke subsidiaries are now investing in technologies that will help combat climate change. So for example, Koch Industries, is now investing in battery, a smart grid, Evie charging and large scale solar technologies. And according to an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal a few months ago, Coke subsidiaries have invested more than $750 million in a range of battery technologies and battery related raw materials, and recycling. And they have new holdings in a zinc battery startup in New Jersey, and three lithium battery related companies in Canada. And one, one really telling quote, that one of the heads of one of the CO subsidiaries gave which was stunning, is, he told a trade journal last November, quote, We are believers in the electrification of everything driven by economics and consumer trends, which is not something you'd expect from anyone at work for Coke. Given that Coke is so heavily invested in fossil fuels, in fact, its major profits come from three oil refineries. 1000s of miles of of oil pipelines, they market crude oil, coal chemicals. They they market call, they have heavy investment still in fossil fuels. And now, it looks like they're starting to step stick their big toe into renewables and electric charging technologies, battery technologies. So that's a little bit of a surprise.
Greg Williams:So does that does that do you think represented anything other than sort of smart portfolio management by savvy industrialist?
Elliott Negin:Well, you have to keep in mind that it's a very small part of coconuts. trees. It's it's not. It's It's tiny compared to everything else it's involved in. But one thing you have to keep in mind and is that Koch is not just a conservative Koch is a radical libertarian. So if he if he was asked about what seems to be an apparent contradiction that his company is getting involved in these kinds of technologies, I would expect him to respond that the private sector should take the lead, not the government, on energy and just about everything else. This is one thing that sort of gets lost in a lot of the coverage of of coke and cokes mind, government efforts to manage the economy or to protect the environment, or provide social welfare programs are what he considers a slippery slope to totalitarianism, he really believes this. So,
Greg Williams:so how does he feel about all the subsidies enjoyed by the extractive industries?
Elliott Negin:Well, what's interesting about that is he's constantly said he doesn't like subsidies. He has constantly said this, he's against subsidies. But on the other hand, the organizations, the think tanks and advocacy groups that he has been funding for years, argue that the oil and gas industry, for example, doesn't get any subsidies, which is ludicrous. So Koch will say one thing, but his, his his grantees, we'll fight like hell to preserve the billions of dollars that the oil and gas industry gets on an annual basis. In fact, the oil and gas industry has been getting massive government subsidies since 1918. So that, but they'll argue that they're, they're the same kind of subsidies that every other company gets. But then on the other hand, they'll they'll start saying, they'll say they they've said this often, that the solar and wind industry should stand on their own and shouldn't be getting any tax breaks, which is a total hypocritical thing to say, given their own industry has been getting in, in today's dollars, billions of dollars for more than 100 years in subsidies.
Greg Williams:So while all of this, this behavior poses some pretty significant risks to effective combating or amelioration of climate change, I think it's also fair to say that it has significant or it poses a pretty significant threat to the the basic operation of democracy. And that was the reason for including the or our, that was the the nature of very interesting in the second article about ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which itself enjoys a lot of funding by by Charles Koch. So for the benefit of our listeners who may never have heard about a like, do you want to give a brief description of who they are and what they do?
Elliott Negin:Sure. Yeah, I call it Alec. But you call you call it a like, we'll have to call the whole thing off. But anyway, Alec, American Legislative Exchange Council has also liked the Koch brothers flown on the under the radar for for decades. And Alec was founded back in 1973, by a Republican US House member from Illinois named Henry Hyde, who went on to become a senator. And he co founded it with a handful of right wing activists, including a man named Paul Wyrick, who was a co founder of the Heritage Foundation, and Alec, where the Heritage Foundation and Charles cokes Cato Foundation, which were all founded around the same time, dealt with and deal with issues at the federal level ALC was created to deal with issues at the state level. And what what ALC does, is it it has, it provides state legislators with ready made fill in the blank sample bills that are largely drafted by corporate lobbyists, that advanced corporate and right wing interests. And they're been doing this since, you know, since 1973. They pushed legislation that would restrict voting rights. They push bills that would undermine efforts to address climate change, and also bills that would increase corporate profits. It's basically a corporate The right wing agenda that they're promoting.
Greg Williams:So I think an important part of the story is just the basic vulnerability of state legislatures to this kind of influence. I know in your article, you talked about the size of state legislative staffs. But I think it may be worth starting with at the federal level. You know, we see these Senate hearings and you know, with lots of legislative aides hovering behind the the senators up at the Dyess but that that level of, of staff support diminishes very quickly, even just as you move from the Senate to the house. And then as you move from the legislature at the federal level, down to the state level, a lot of these legislators themselves don't even work in that job full time. It's a part time job. And what is the staffing level look down at the state level?
Elliott Negin:Right. The reason why Alec targets state legislators is because it's easier for corporations and right wing foundations to get what they want from state legislators. And that's because, as you just mentioned, a lot of them have limited resources, a lot of them work part time. And their job is to introduce legislation. But when they don't have a staff or they have a very small one. Organizations like Alec provides them with a shortcut by providing these ready made, fill in the blank bills. And as I just mentioned, many lawmakers are part time, there are some legislators that legislatures that actually only meet in session every other year, we're talking about Montana, and Nevada, North Dakota and Texas. So most of these legislators have to get jobs on the side, they're very busy. They don't have much time to put into legislating. So they become dependent on groups like ALEC. And given Alex political bias. They can take advantage of the fact that Republicans control more statehouse and the Democrats, Alec has about 2000 state legislators who are members who pay about $200 for a two year membership. And then they also have roughly 300, corporate and corporate members, law firms, foundations, whatnot, right wing organizations that pay as much as $25,000 to be a member. But then Alec has these annual conferences, and then periodic conferences during the year where the corporate members pay up to $60,000 to to sponsor one of their workshops or one of their meetings. But anyway, that these meetings happen behind closed doors, they're very secretive organization. And you have corporate lobbyists writing with the Republican legislators writing the sample bills, which then the Republicans take back home to their state houses and then introduce as legislation.
Greg Williams:It doesn't just stop the legislation, either though, they provide expert witnesses, you know, essentially marketing materials for these, these these bills, you know, if you go to promote an A like, Bill, you get a whole package of support, you know, the language itself, which you know, as you describe, it just needs to be filled in with, with a few states specific elements. But then you get this, this team that's going to help you put together a plan to effectively promote that legislation and support it with with both literature and experts.
Elliott Negin:Sure, yeah. I mean, they, they basically employed two main tactics. But one is, Alec gives its bills, these deceptive titles and descriptions, to take advantage the fact that lawmakers don't even bother to read their bills actual text, often. I mean, they just they don't have the time it is they see, they'd see a title a gun. That sounds good. And when even when lawmakers do take time to read the the Alec written bills, there's the draft language is usually technical or inconspicuous, and it hides the real world impact of what the bill would do. I'll give you an example. One of the Alec bills that was picked up that was actually passed I think in a letter Haven't legislatures or at least 11. It's called the asbestos claims Transparency Act, which sounds like it's going to help victims of asbestos exposure. Well, in fact it the bill doesn't require companies to disclose information about their products containing asbestos. It doesn't tell victims exposed to asbestos, which we all know causes cancer, how to get help and compensation. The bill actually protects asbestos manufacturers by making it harder for victims to sue. The other tactic that I talked about in my article was to indoctrinate or just mislead state lawmakers, Alec will introduce them to as you you mentioned earlier, a team of supposedly neutral experts who are in fact secretly representing special interests. In the case of the asbestos claims Transparency Act, there was one gentleman who was going from Statehouse to state house, and he was really representing the he was he was part he was connected to the US Chamber of Commerce, which is in the in in the pocket of the asbestos manufacturers and legislators that no idea what his background was. And then, when it comes to climate change, I wrote about this specifically a few years ago, Alec would have these workshops at their conferences, where they would invite fossil fuel industry funded climate science deniers, many of which were funded by Koch foundations and ExxonMobil and other interested parties. And they would stand up in front of ALEC, legislator members and tell them that falsely say that there's no scientific consensus that human activity, mainly burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change. And they falsely claim that the benefits of global warming emissions far outweigh the costs. Now, Alec doesn't go that far in its official statements, but still on its website, it claims that the jury is out on the role human activity plays in global warming, which is completely false. So they tell these folks who are already predisposed because of their political bias. They, they lie to them. And then or they, they write these bills in such a way that it's hard to figure out exactly what they're going to be doing. And most of these legislators are so busy. And they also have full time jobs outside of working as a member of the legislature, that they just go ahead and they introduce it, they and they enact it. They're in a USA Today and a few other organizations did. Newsom and advocacy group did a study back in 2019. And they found that I think, from 2012 to 2018, Alec legislators introduced roughly 2900, Alec written bills in their legislatures across the country, and 600, more than 600 of them were enacted, which is about a 20%. Success rate. And that's a pretty formidable track record, given that US Congress, less than 10% of the bills introduced are actually enacted into law.
Unknown:So phenomenal record in terms of their,
Elliott Negin:their, their, their effective, yes. And it's they they prey on the fact that as we already said, these legislators are working part time they don't have they may have one person staff, they may have no staff and they misrepresent the facts that they give to these folks. And and then you know, it makes it produces results.
Greg Williams:So in some ways, it's sort of like the fast food of legislation. It's it's easy to pick up on your way home, tastes good. But if you don't pay a whole lot of attention to what's going into it, it leads to some pretty unhealthy bras.
Elliott Negin:They also the you know, they have these conferences and they want and dine the legislators and they build relationships with the legislators. And it's, it's kind of hard. It's it's, I mean, environmental groups obviously also lobby members of state legislators but they don't have the same kind of resources behind them and the ALEKS budget for 2020 which is the last year I can get it for was $8 million And that's but according to the study that USA Today did 2019 It was a two year investigation found that something like 60% of the money that's going into Alex annual budget is coming from a handful of libertarian foundations, including Cokes, foundations, and the Adolph Coors Foundation, which is from the beer money.
Greg Williams:So I can't help but share the following anecdote which is way back when I worked for, for Dena Pogo, one of the things that we looked into was water sampling contracts at Rocky Flats facility where we, we make the plutonium pits that go into nuclear weapons and I was on the phone with the state engineer's office trying to understand the topography and, and the hydrology of the area around the Rocky Flats facility. And I just happen to notice that golden Colorado is immediately adjacent to it. And cow you know, is nobody worried about you know, the this the the contaminants from Rocky Flats getting into into Coors beer and immediately said, Oh, no, we're much more concerned about what's coming out of the Corps plant.
Elliott Negin:Well, corps also was the course family was the money behind starting the Heritage Foundation back in 1973. So the course family has been involved with promoting anti government anti regulation. Think tanks and advocacy groups for a long time.
Greg Williams:So I was intrigued that your article pointed out a number of cases in which you might say that Alec went too far. And and they lost some important corporate sponsors. You want to describe a couple of those cases?
Elliott Negin:Yeah, sure. Well, back in, actually up, you know, I might have said this earlier, but we didn't know much about Koch Industries to the Koch brothers up until about early 2000s. They were flying under the radar screen. And Alec, we didn't know much about Alec until about 2011, when a group called the Center for Media and Democracy, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin, got some internal Alec documents from a whistleblower and posted them on Alex website. It still didn't really blow it didn't really out Alec that much because it was kind of obscure. But what really did out Alec finally, which was about a year later, in, in, in, in the wake of the controversy over the Stand Your Ground law that in Florida, that led to that basically involved the murder of Trayvon Martin that, that Alec took that self defense law that was in Florida, and and wrote a draft similar to that and peddled it in state houses across the country. And at least 30 states adopted it based on that Florida law, and there was a big pushback on that. And a number of major companies quit Alec because of that. It will also finally sick the press on Alec. So more news organizations were snooping around to try to figure out what was Alec all about? Where is it getting its money. And that was really the first time more Americans knew I found out about Alec up until about 2011 2012. We know and heard about them before they were doing a lot of these things in secret. But since 2012, since that embarrassment, you would call it more than 100 corporations have have quit Alec and more than 20 foundations and organizations have also quit. So they have lost some of their members.
Greg Williams:And I'd like say the takeaway from that is get out, you know, participate in protests by traditional journalism, read the newspaper. And if you continue with that and and get and stay organized. You can have an effect on things like this
Elliott Negin:Yeah, what's really helped out Alec, and also forced these corporations and trade associations and foundations to drop their memberships. And also has actually hurt our its bottom line. Its annual budget dropped 25%, between 2017 and 2020. But it's been pressure from shareholders in the companies that have been members from unions and also public interest groups. On top of the unflattering news coverage. Some of the companies that acquit Alec over the last decade are household names, we're talking about companies like Amazon AT and T, Facebook, General Electric, General Motors, Google, IBM, and Microsoft, even major oil and gas companies have canceled their memberships, including BP, America, Exxon, Mobil, and shell. But one thing that you were you were talking about earlier, it's really critical is that one problem and what one thing that Alex is able to exploit exploit is that the general public pays little attention to what goes on in state houses. Johns Hopkins did a survey in 2018, where they found that only 19% of the respondents to the survey could name their state legislator, and a third didn't even know the name of their governor. So that's, that's not good if people aren't paying attention. One of the other problems is that over the last decade or so a lot of newspapers have folded. And even the ones that are still in business are doing less coverage of stay houses. So there's harder, it's harder to get information. But it's one thing that folks can do beyond just trying to pay more attention to what goes on in their state houses, is that they can support the groups that are watchdogging, Alec, and I can just name a few of them. The Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Media and Democracy, which hosts a website called Alec exposed, which is a great place where you can find out which one of your representatives and your state houses are members of ALEC, a group called Color of Change. Common Cause is another group. And common cause has state chapters. So I mean, in my area, I live in DC. So I know that there's a common cause chapter in Maryland and Virginia and I, when I talk about this, locally, I tell folks in the DC area who live in those states to contact common cause in their states. So that's a way to stay on top of what's going on with Alec.
Greg Williams:So as we near the bottom of the hour, are there any topics that we haven't covered that you'd like to touch on?
Elliott Negin:Well, yeah, I'd like to go back to Charles Koch for a minute. And, again, I guess we're assuming that your listeners know a lot about Charles Koch, I don't know if that's the case or not, but no, I would I would not make that assumption. Okay. Well, I, we maybe we could dial back and give you some more back, give your your listeners a little more information about Koch, which is spelled K O ch. Not co Ke. Koch is he'll be at seven in November. He's 87 years old. And he's the CEO of Koch Industries. And right now, he's the 15th richest person in the country sorry, in the world, not the country's the 15th richest person in the world. And he's worth more than $68 billion, which is and what I wrote my story in March, he was the 20th richest person in the world. And he was worth $10 billion less so in the last few months. He's made $10 billion personally, which is pretty outrageous. But he in his late brother David, who asked who died in 2019 inherited their father's oil refinery company in the late 60s, and renamed it Koch Industries. And it's now a worldwide conglomerate that owns oil refineries pipelines. Like I said earlier markets, crude oil, coal and chemicals. It trades in energy derivatives. And its annual revenues are about $115 billion a year, and it's the second largest privately held company in the country. And, as I said earlier, Coke is in just a garden variety conservative. He and his brother David, are hardcore libertarians, and they believe that the private sector is better equipped to addressed social and economic problems and the government, they're anti government. And one snapshot or gives you in a way we give you a snapshot, you're listening to a snapshot of what their agenda has been about for years is David ran for price president on the Libertarian Party ticket back in 1980. And it got 1% of the vote. This is when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter, but the party platform tell us tells you everything. It called for getting rid of most of the federal agencies, including the EPA, the FDA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Election Commission, the US Postal Service, in wanted, the Transportation Department Energy Department does get rid of them. It also calls for privatizing public schools and colleges, eliminating income taxes and campaign finance laws and abolishing Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And this is what the Koch brothers always wanted to do. And the cokes especially disliked the Environmental Protection Agency, because the EPA fined Koch Industries 10s of millions of dollars over the years for violations and forced to pay millions of dollars in cleanup costs. So the cokes despise the EPA. So it's no surprise that the Koch brothers would do all they can to stop the federal government from regulating global warming emissions, which would undercut their profits. So that's the background that sort of leads up to our previous conversation of why the Koch brothers and their foundation spent some spent so much money to try to stop of federal and state efforts to combat climate change.
Greg Williams:And with the the recent congressional act, no, I'm sorry, Supreme Court action to curtail the EPA is authority to regulate carbon dioxide. Seems like that's money well spent.
Elliott Negin:Yeah, they actually played a role in spending money to help that happen. One thing that I think was pretty smart of the Congress or the Democrats in Congress is that the bill that's still waiting for the House to sign off on the reconciliation bill offers a lot of incentives. It's incentive based, to get people to buy electric vehicles or to get to help give tax breaks to encourage solar and wind projects, etc. is that it's not for years, when people were talking about a carbon tax. And the Koch brothers were behind a pledge that mostly Republicans said signed years ago, that they would never vote for a carbon tax. The carbon tax has always been a dead idea because of them, partly because of them. And one of their main, one of the main people in Congress who went to bat for the cokes and did a lot of work to make sure that there were a lot of folks who signed on to that carbon tax pledge or anti Carbon Tax pledge was none other than Vice President Pence when he was in the house. So what, sorry, go ahead.
Greg Williams:Oh, so one might argue that a carbon tax is as straightforward as just about any other tax or fee that goes to pay for the use of things, whether it's highways or airports or anything else. Somehow, when it comes to the, the petrochemical industry. It's, it's not fair. And it's meddling with with the free market.
Elliott Negin:Right. Right. But in any case, cokes fingerprints are on a lot of things. And it's not just Coke. Coke has a network of of high dollar donors who are really rich folks. And the best place to one of the best places to find out about this is Jane Mayer's book, dark money that came out a few years ago, Jane Mayer is the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. And she's done great work on the cokes and other and other folks in their orbit. And that book really explains completely on how they collaborate with each other to try to stop of government efforts to combat climate change, among other things.
Greg Williams:So one of the things I probably should have told you in the introduction is that we week we go to a lot of effort to include links to all of these resources in the description of the of the podcast episode. So you might say that the fundamental purpose of the podcast is to get people interested in doing their own research into becoming informed on these issues. And so for those reasons, every time I hear you mentioned, a great resource, like dark money, or Alec, expose the Color of Change, etc, that goes on my list of things to include in the in the episode description so that you can get there with with a click of a mouse. So with that idea, are there any closing thoughts that you have or additional resources you'd like? Like to make part of that description?
Elliott Negin:Yeah, as I was saying earlier, I think I mean, in my in my mind, Charles Koch and his network of high dollar donors and his network of think tanks and advocacy groups that he funds and is a bigger threat to American democracy as Donald Trump. And that is it given how much money his network spends on campaigns, he's got a stranglehold as much as stranglehold on the Republican Party as, as Donald Trump does. It's just not as it's he's not in the news every day. He's the man behind the curtain.
Greg Williams:He's somewhat less fond of calling attention to himself.
Elliott Negin:And so I think people really need in many respects. One thing I'd add is that, in many respects, Trump was a Trojan horse for Coke. Because when Trump was elected, he didn't really have any connections to policy people. But his transition team had did. And like I said earlier, his transition team had was Mike Pence, who was a longtime coke network veteran. So pence installed at least 50 Koch network alumni inside the Trump administration. And he also installed another 50 or so from the Heritage Foundation, which Koch foundations support generously. They all had the same agenda was to roll back protections and safeguards. So the Trump administration, with these folks in key positions, we're talking about Rick Perry at the Energy Department, Scott Pruitt, or the EPA, Betsy DeVos, at the Education Department, and Mark short, who started off as a White House Legislative Affairs Director. They're all out of Copeland. And the Trump administration rolled back at least 260 regulations, including more than 100 environmental rules. And that's just what Koch and heritage wanted to happen. So you can really, if you look closely, cokes fingerprints are over a lot of what the Trump administration did visa vie Environmental Public Health safeguards, workplace protections, etc. Now, the Biden ministration is cleared out a lot of the Koch and heritage people when it took office, and it's been rolling back the Trump rollbacks. But I think it's really important for listeners to understand that Koch and his Donor Network are still still hold considerable sway over the GOP. And they will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on their their preferred candidates. And looking ahead to 2024. There are a number of Koch funded politicians that are considering running for president and I'm talking about pence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Mike Pompeo, and Florida Senator Rick Scott. These are all Koch people. So Trump are no trump, the Koch network that's going to be casting a long shadow over Washington for years to come. And people have to understand that I mean, Trump gets all the all the coverage, but the Koch folks, it's not just Koch, it's his network. Our our I think they're dangerous. They're libertarians, they and if you they're going to try to roll back as much as they can. They want to cut the government down to stomp and let state governments call the shots. And as I said earlier, state legislators are much easier to manipulate than Congress because of what we talked about earlier. There are a lot of them are part time. So we have I think, I think democracy's in a crisis here. And it's not just Trump. It's also Koch and all that and all the and the Koch network. That's a major threat to the future of the country.
Greg Williams:All right. Well, I want to thank you very much for joining us for tonight's episode. Again, our guest is Elliot Nagin of the Union of Concerned Scientists. We hope we'll see you on the podcast again. And by all means, if there are other topics that either our listeners would like to hear us speak about or you Elliot would like to join us for suggest other guests, by all means, reach out and contact us.
Elliott Negin:Well, thanks for the opportunity to participate really appreciate it.