KOCH INDUSTRIES

PETROCHEMICALS AND PIPELINES, OIL CLIMATE CRIMINALS

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IT KILLS THEM GETTING IT OUT - Drilling and pumping oil is a messy occupation playing with carcinogenic fluids, that traditionally makes millionaires of those prospectors. Hence the name "Black Gold" and "Texas Tea." Years ago oil prospecting was respectable, today those investing in oil are deemed by many to be climate criminals - because it kills us when we burn it.

As at November 2021, Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries. Alongside his now-deceased brother David, Charles Koch has a lengthy resume of climate malfeasance. The multibillionaire is the longtime head of Koch Industries, a refining, petrochemical and pipeline company labeled by Greenpeace as a “kingpin of climate denial”.

The Kochs, and particularly Charles, moved early to politicize climate change. Charles founded and funded the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank known to coordinate and distribute climate denial, which became the first organization to stoke the ideological divide on the climate crisis. Koch Industries went on to spend nearly $150m financing climate denial groups between 1997 and 2018 alone.

Since his brother’s death, Charles has attempted to backtrack on his legacy of sowing hyper-partisan division. But according to OpenSecrets, Koch Industries is the top spender ($5.6m) on annual lobbying on oil and gas so far this year. Fossil fuels include coal for power stations, of which more on those pages.

G20 abusers will say they had no choice. They needed to keep burning coal and oil for their economies - just like the camp guards at the many concentration camps, they were forced into business as usual - in the case of the camp guards, they argued they were just following orders. But that is not true. We all have choices. There are clean alternatives, such as solar and wind power. There is no need to keep building coal fired electricity generating stations, and no need to drive carcinogenic petrol or diesel vehicles that contribute to lung cancer. We have hydrogen fuel cells, electrolyzers and zero emission electric vehicles.

One thing stopping transition, as in allowing climate criminals to carry on regardless (Blah, blah, blah), is political corruption, where it is alleged that some world leaders have their hands in the pockets of the fossil fuel giants. We've all heard of party political donations, but there are other kinds of bribes. Procurement fraud is one example of slush funds built into economies, with large brown envelopes full of cash or other in-kind favors, for those prepared to turn a blind eye.

In Koch's own words: “Boy did we screw up. What a mess.”

It is not too late to redeem yourself Mr Koch. The renewable energy industry welcomes you with open arms, difficult as it will undoubtedly be to transition. Old dogs can learn new tricks. 

ADDICTED TO OIL - Oil and coal deposits are the Banks of Death for cowardly administrations, who it appears, refuse to even try to to fix the climate chaos, for fear of the unknown. Are they Chicken?

CANCER KINGS - At the Paris talks in 2015 the United States joined three petro-states - Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait - to water down the UN’s commitment to a scientific report that examined the damaging global effects of 1.5 degrees of Celsius. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman described Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States as “a new axis of evil.”

In 2009 Saudi Arabia tried to argue it deserved compensation for its oil as the world moves off fossil fuels, and while that request was a non-starter. Copenhagen ultimately produced a weak deal that failed to bridge old divides between historically large polluters and relative newcomers like China and India.

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MOBILE GAS CHAMBERS - The oil barons know about cancer victims dying of lung cancer from carcinogenic and particulate vehicle exhausts, as they reap export dollars in return. During the Second World War, concentration camp guards used petrol and diesel truck exhausts to gas prisoners, before Zyklon B.

The Nazis began experimenting with poison gas for the purpose of mass murder in late 1939 with the killing of mental patients (“euthanasia”). A Nazi euphemism, “euthanasia” referred to the systematic killing of those Germans whom the Nazis deemed “unworthy of life” because of mental illness or physical disability

One of several methods used was the gas van. Such vans were first deployed in 1940 in “Euthanasia” operations. Hitler delegated the “Euthanasia” operation to Reichsleiter Philip Bouhler, Dr. Karl Brandt, and several doctors of their choice. The targets were several German population groups: the mentally ill or retarded, the chronically ill, and criminals. At first, the murders were carried out in fixed, sealed chambers, into which carbon monoxide gas was pumped from metal canisters. In addition, some were killed by lethal injections and by shooting. Gas vans were first used in 1940, when Polish mentally ill children were locked in a sealed van and killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

The gas van was invented and used by the Soviet secret police NKVD in the late 1930s during the Great Purge. It was later widely implemented as an extermination method in Nazi Germany to kill those the regime deemed enemies of the Third Reich, mostly Jews.

INVENTION AND USE IN THE SOVIET UNION - The gas van was invented in the Soviet Union in 1936, by Isay Berg, the head of the administrative and economic department of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast which suffocated batches of prisoners with engine fumes in a camouflaged bread van while on the drive out to the mass graves at Butovo, where the prisoners were subsequently buried. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “I. D. Berg was ordered to carry out the decisions of the NKVD troika of Moscow Oblast, and Berg was carrying out this assignment: he was driving people to the executions by shooting. But, when in Moscow Oblast, there came to be three troikas having their sessions simultaneously, the executioners could not cope with the load. They hit upon a solution: to strip the victims naked, to tie them up, plug their mouths and throw them into a closed truck, disguised from the outside as a bread van. During transportation the fuel gases came into the truck, and when delivered to the farthest [execution] ditch the arrestees were already dead.” Berg denied that he was the inventor of the mobile gassing van.

COAL & OIL COMPANIES - In seeking to extend the use of fossil fuels, the world's oil, gas and coal companies, and the nations that continue to develop coal generation for so-called cheap energy, are turning the whole planet into one giant carcinogenic gas chamber.

Benjamin Sporton

Charles Koch

Darren Woods

Fiona Wild
Marc Morano

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LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/climate-crisis-villains-americas-dirty-dozen

https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/climate_criminals/

https://www.themarketmakernews.com/2021/10/27/the-dirty-dozen-meet-americas-top-climate-villains/

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