Koch Koch Koch Koch

Did someone say "Koch"? A bright point in an otherwise dismal political season is the attention being showered on Charles and David Koch, the reclusive Kansas oil-and-gas barons who spend millions on Tea Partiers, climate-change deniers, and other institutions in order to keep the billions rolling in. Their latest effort, as detailed by the New York Times last Friday, has been a $1 million contribution to the effort to defeat California's AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. The aim of this landmark legislation is to roll back the state's CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, which is obviously in conflict with the Koch brothers' goal of selling as much oil and gas as possible. More importantly, a Koch spokesperson tells the Times that should California be allowed to do something about global warming, "it sets a bad precedent for other state and federal governments to do the same thing.”

After shining the spotlight on the nation's biggest promoters of global warming, the Gray Lady followed up today with a killer editorial, "The Brothers Koch and AB 32." Well worth your time, but here's the kicker:

Who wins if this law is repudiated? The Koch brothers, maybe, but the biggest winners will be the Chinese, who are already moving briskly ahead in the clean technology race. And the losers? The people of California, surely. But the biggest loser will be the planet.

--Paul Rauber