The
Koch brothers are buying up museum boards to peddle their junk climate
theories.
By
We’ve all seen those touchy-feely TV ads with baby deer,
butterflies, and sylvan streams — claiming that some big corporate polluter is
nature’s best friend.
There’s a word for such hokum: greenwashing.
Leave it to the Koch brothers, however, to invent a whole new
category of greenwashing. Doling out millions of their oil-smeared greenbacks,
David and Charles Koch have been buying their way onto the boards and into the
exhibits of elite museums of science.
The fossil-fueled billionaires are using the academic and cultural prestige of these establishments to wash their filthy reputations and to spew the self-serving balderdash that climate change is a natural phenomenon, not one caused by polluting profiteers like them.
Astonishingly, David Koch was able to purchase a seat on the decision-making boards of
the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Museum
of Natural History in Washington.
I know museums are scrambling for money, but come on — an
infamous science-denier directing a science museum?
Maybe not for long.
An upstart group is highlighting economic and political forces
that shape (or misshape) nature. Called The Natural History Museum, this outfit
is outing the Kochs and the other greenwashers invading the public’s science
spaces…and invading science itself.
More than merely exposing the invaders, however, this mobile
“museum” is recruiting prominent scientists, activating museum staffers, and
rallying you and me into a spirited cultural campaign that can oust these
hucksters, reject their tainted money, and throw junk science out of our
centers of real science.
You can find out more by visiting www.TheNaturalHistoryMuseum.org.
OtherWords
columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.
He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org.