What If The Koch Brothers Were Pro-Eco?
What state would the world be in now if some of the richest and most powerful men on the planet used their resources for the advancement of environmental causes?
Charles and David Koch, more commonly referred to as the Koch Brothers, jointly controlled Koch Industries, an oil company founded by their father Fred C. Koch, until David’s death in 2019. As of 2019, Koch Industries was the second largest privately owned company in America, and the Koch family currently enjoys a combined net worth of $128.8 billion. It is not just the obscene wealth that characterises the Koch Brothers, but also how they have deployed it to achieve favourable (sic) political outcomes. The brothers founded the Koch Charitable Foundation which supports a variety of causes, but is mostly focused on funding think-tanks that promote libertarian and ‘conservative’ causes, propagate climate denial, and benefit the Republican party. In 2004, David Koch founded Americans for Prosperity (AFP), one of the main non-profits who have been bankrolling the Tea Party Movement. AFP is the major cog in a wider network of foundations and lobby groups, with hundreds of millions of dollars passing through it every year from millionaire and billionaire supporters. Some of the policies that have been opposed by the AFP include Medicaid, raising the minimum wage, and, most importantly for the following counter-factual history, policies that would attempt to tackle manmade climate change. Having inherited an enormous amount of wealth, then choosing to funnel that fiscal power into the propagation of climate denial through special interest groups, think-tanks, and lobby groups, the Koch Brothers have enshrined a legacy of intentionally hindering necessary environmental policy which would have prevented untold suffering, for the sake of protecting their business interests.
What, though, if the Koch Brothers took environmental concerns seriously, what if they really thought about the state of the planet they were leaving for their children, what if they put their considerable resources and political influence into a cause for good? What if the Koch Brothers had become environmentalists?