One Down, One To Go

[Derec]

David Koch, billionaire conservative activist and philanthropist, dies at 79

All that money hoarded and he still died like everyone else will.

Those sentences really don't go together.

One can give away much of one's money without giving away all of it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Says a climate change denier. The Amazon and the Arctic burn. Greenland is melting. The ice caps are vanishing. But "This is fine."

You get a grip. On the Calthrate gun and real climate science.

It really is a rapture like cult.

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Yeah, you're not really seeing the whole point of the discussion if you really think that. It just means we need to start regulating our actions: we are quite fairly fucked now, but we might not be quite completely fucked so long as we change our behavior.

You are essentially behaving as per the trope "maybe if I stick my head in the sand I will not get eaten".

 

[Derec]

I don't think you're looking at the full impact of their influence. It's not their politics, per se, it's the way they used their money to influence politics, in ways that very few people can.

It's the dirty deeds,

... done dirt cheap?

like stealing oil from Indian reservations than hiding or destroying the documentation,

Can you be more specific about this instance where they "stole" oil from an Indian reservation?

when they were being investigated. It's how they used their political influence to help impact regulations regarding their own industries. Those are a few of the things that make them despised.

And, while it's true they did give some money to charities, it was a total of about 1.2 billion, which considering that Koch is worth something like 42 billion, is not really a sacrifice at all.

I wonder how much of his net worth he left to charities in his will.

I did a little happy dance when I heard of his death.

That's such a weird hatred to have. I reserve this for truly horrible people.

 

[Derec]

Indeed. And 79 is not really that old nowadays either, especially if you are 62 like I am. It is very very sobering to say the least when someone with virtually unlimited resources still can not manage to keep themselves alive.

Wealth can certainly help, but it is no panacea.

Without life, all the money in the world means nothing at all.

True. I hope he found ways to enjoy his wealth. What I really don't get is those "millionaires next door" that live like the poors but when they die it turns out they secretly had a lot of money. Money is nothing but a handy exchange medium for goods and services. If you don't want to acquire goods or obtain services, what good is money?

 

[TSwizzle]

Yeah, you're not really seeing the whole point of the discussion if you really think that.

Your point seemed to be that two brothers "may have single-handedly doomed our species". This is utter tosh.

It just means we need to start regulating our actions: we are quite fairly fucked now, but we might not be quite completely fucked so long as we change our behavior.

What's this "we" business ? It's your religion, don't get me involved.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yeah, you're not really seeing the whole point of the discussion if you really think that.

Your point seemed to be that two brothers "may have single-handedly doomed our species". This is utter tosh.

It just means we need to start regulating our actions: we are quite fairly fucked now, but we might not be quite completely fucked so long as we change our behavior.

What's this "we" business ? It's your religion, don't get me involved.

We are all people on the same boat. If you can't be bothered to help bail and stop drilling holes in the floor, through your exclusion of "we", "we" should get down to throwing you overboard entirely.

The Calthrate gun is real, and you and your kind (most certainly not something I would consider "people") wish to ignore it and let it kill us. Environments like that of Venus are the result of the kind of feedback loop we are approaching.

There's nothing religious about it. Other than your religious denial of actual science.

 

[TSwizzle]

Your point seemed to be that two brothers "may have single-handedly doomed our species". This is utter tosh.




What's this "we" business ? It's your religion, don't get me involved.

We are all people on the same boat. If you can't be bothered to help bail and stop drilling holes in the floor, through your exclusion of "we", "we" should get down to throwing you overboard entirely.

The Calthrate gun is real, and you and your kind (most certainly not something I would consider "people") wish to ignore it and let it kill us. Environments like that of Venus are the result of the kind of feedback loop we are approaching.

There's nothing religious about it. Other than your religious denial of actual science.

It really is a rapture like cult for you. Bonkers.

And I'm out

 

[Derec]

The Calthrate gun is real,

It may be real.
But that doesn't change the fact that we can't decarbonize the world economy overnight. We can't even do it within 10 years envisioned by Corporal Sandy's Green New Deal without doing serious economic damage. And Bernie's version of the GND, while it has some good ideas, would cost 1.6 trillion per year over the next 10 years. And even if US were to bite the bullet, what about China? India? Russia?

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[ZiprHead]

The Koch Money Was a Primary Vector for the Prion Disease That's Infected the Republican Party

Fair warning. I am about to speak very ill of the dead. David Koch went to his eternal barbecue spit on Friday. Except for his surviving brother, Charles, no man had a worse effect on American politics since the death of John C. Calhoun. Every malignancy currently afflicting us can be traced in one way or another into their wallets, and that's not even to mention the lasting damage they've done to the planet as a whole. Sorry, Morning Joe gang, I wouldn't care if they opened branches of the National Museum of Puppies and Rainbows in every congressional district in the United States. The Koch brothers financed the wrecking ball that is still doing damage, and now one of them is dead, and, if I am not rejoicing, I am breathing deep sighs of relief and praying deep prayers of thanksgiving.

 

[barbos]

The Calthrate gun is real,

It may be real.
But that doesn't change the fact that we can't decarbonize the world economy overnight. We can't even do it within 10 years envisioned by Corporal Sandy's Green New Deal without doing serious economic damage. And Bernie's version of the GND, while it has some good ideas, would cost 1.6 trillion per year over the next 10 years. And even if US were to bite the bullet, what about China? India? Russia?
View attachment 23335

Don't know about Bernie's plan but I believe US and EU can still de carbonize it even without China/Russia/India by forcing them to comply with rules developed countries unilaterally set for them. Giving something in exchange would help too.

 

[TSwizzle]

This irrational obsession with carbon needs to stop.

 

[barbos]

This irrational obsession with carbon needs to stop.

Can't agree more

 

[Canard DuJour]

.i would never dance on his grave. It would bring too much joy to the idea of his life. I would rather install a toilet there that empties into his crypt.

I thought he should have been honoured with a full state burial or cremation. Until yesterday.

 

[southernhybrid]

There are plenty of reasons to hate the Kochs. But, denial of climate change is one.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/sunday/david-koch-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

David Koch, who died Friday at the age of 79, is best known as a major funder of right-wing political causes, from tax cuts to deregulation, an enthusiastic patron of the arts and a man-about-town. But to his critics, his most lasting political legacy might very well be the rapidly warming world that he has left behind.

Koch Industries realized early on that it would be a financial disaster for the firm if the American government regulated carbon emissions or made companies pay a price for releasing carbon into the atmosphere. The effects of such a policy would be measured over decades for Koch. The company has billions of dollars sunk into the complex and expensive infrastructure of crude-oil processing. If a limit on greenhouse gas emissions were imposed, it could dampen demand for oil and diminish the value of those assets and their future sales. The total dollar losses would likely be measured in trillions over a period of 30 years or more.

Construction on the Koch political machine began in the 1970s, after Charles Koch took over the family company. He and David began funding and orchestrating a political project to restrain government power in the United States through lobbying, think tanks and political donations. The effort accelerated in the 1990s after a Senate committee, following a long investigation, accused Koch Industries of stealing oil from Native American reservations where the company was operating. That experience convinced David and Charles Koch that they needed to have a stronger presence in Washington to fend off their critics.

This machine has been employed to great effect to ensure that no government action is taken to control greenhouse gas emissions. In the early 1990s, President George H.W. Bush made it clear that he would support a treaty to limit carbon emissions.

Ding dong the witch is dead.......


And Derec, the article mentions the investigation of the Koch's stealing oil from Indian reservations. If you are truly interested, you can do your own DD, as there are numerous other articles that discuss the claim and what the Koch's did to hide what they did.

And, NO. We're not going to stop talking about carbon. Are you deniers not even a little bit concerned about the fires that are eating up the Amazon, a source of about 20% of the world's 02?

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[barbos]

I doubt his apartment is stacked with cash. But if it is I agree that would be crazy.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Indeed. And 79 is not really that old nowadays either, especially if you are 62 like I am. It is very very sobering to say the least when someone with virtually unlimited resources still can not manage to keep themselves alive.

Wealth can certainly help, but it is no panacea.

Without life, all the money in the world means nothing at all.

True. I hope he found ways to enjoy his wealth. What I really don't get is those "millionaires next door" that live like the poors but when they die it turns out they secretly had a lot of money. Money is nothing but a handy exchange medium for goods and services. If you don't want to acquire goods or obtain services, what good is money?

Did you read the book? The millionaire next door is more about people with modest incomes, but who live below their means and invest the excess into long term investments rather than throw it away on new cars and vacations. They live modestly and it doesn't bother them when neighbors/friends have more material things. They are focused on the future.

 

[Bomb#20]

He made his money through environmental destruction and fought tirelessly against environment protection and against the mitigation of climate change. He and his brother may have single-handedly doomed our species and every land animal larger than a breadbox.

You say that as though all that oil wouldn't have come out of the ground and burned anyway if only the Kochs hadn't lobbied against carbon regulations. It's going to burn, regulations or no, as long as seven billion people feel the need to burn it. Seven billion people are going to feel the need to burn it as long as they don't have access to a practical alternative. And they aren't going to have access to a practical alternative as long as so-called "environmentalists" keep obstructing most of the world from ramping up the well-known practical alternative. He and his brother are barely a blip on the graph of inevitable doom as long as the rest of us keep worrying about climate change denial and ignoring the elephant in the room that is climate change solution denial.

Whatever advocacy he spoke for for gay people ... the fact that he allowed his own brother to be forced out of the family legacy over his homosexuality; advocacy of such would at best be visible as his own guilt over those events.

"Allowed"? David was six when their father sent Frederick away. By the time the old man died and David and Charles took over the company, he was an adult who'd made his own life choices. What were they supposed to do, invite an art and drama major to come run the company alongside the brothers who studied engineering and business?

(If you're talking about when they forced him to sell his shares, that happened many years later after Frederick participated in a minority shareholder hostile takeover attempt. They forced Bill out at the same time over the same incident, and Bill isn't gay.)

 

[Derec]

Don't know about Bernie's plan

Read and weep about it here.
Bernie Sanders’ ‘Green New Deal’ looks like a trillion bucks (OK, 16 trillion)
Some excerpts

Moreover, Sanders’ plan pitches a ban on hydraulic fracturing — a.k.a. fracking — and mountaintop coal mining.

Phasing out coal quickly is a great idea, but banning fracking is stupid. It has made far US far less dependent on oil imports and has made us self-sufficient on natural gas.

He also plans on establishing a $40 billion Climate Justice Resiliency Fund specifically to help communities of color prepare for climate impacts.

One big positive of Sanders' 2016 campaign is that he did not really play the identity politics game. I guess that is over.

While the Green New Deal of Ocasio-Cortez and Markey calls for transitioning to 100-percent zero-emission energy generation and slashing emissions from transportation “as much as is technologically feasible” within 10 years, Sanders’ plan ups the ante a bit. He calls for eliminating all emissions from the transportation sector by 2030.

Absolutely impossible. Even if you could miraculously get all new cars sold in US to be EVs by 2030, there is still a huge number of existing vehicles on the road. And then there is air travel, which is much harder to decarbonize. You'd have to go the synthetic fuel route, which will be difficult to produce in sufficient quantities without nuclear power. Speaking of which ...

And while the original resolution doesn’t exclude the use of nuclear power or developing technologies like carbon capture, Sanders’ proposal prohibits so-called “false solutions,” specifically naming nuclear, carbon sequestration, and geoengineering among them.

A big mistake if you ask me.

but I believe US and EU can still de carbonize it even without China/Russia/India by forcing them to comply with rules developed countries unilaterally set for them. Giving something in exchange would help too.

If will be very difficult to unilaterally impose and enforce such rules.