Koch Brothers Exposed

A few nights ago I watched the provocative documentary, Koch Brothers Exposed, with a group of activist students here at Boston University. I had seen the film before and it was good to see it again, particularly now, between the mock fright of Halloween and the present presidential election, whose outcome could cause a real fright.

Koch Brothers Exposed is a sort of horror film where you constantly wonder what how the Koch Brothers will next rear their greedy heads. According to the film's website, between 1997 and 2010 the Koch Brothers, whose company, Koch Industries, is one of the top ten polluters in the US, gave more than $60 million to climate change denial groups. They are one of the main reasons that there is popular uncertainty over climate change in this country, while the science has long been settled (yes, humans are affecting the climate). In sixty minutes, the film shows the Koch Brothers' self-serving reach in issues as diverse as social security, environmental regulations, workers rights, education and voter identification.. It's amazing what a few well-placed million dollars here and there will do to get your point across.

One of their most disturbing causes is grants to colleges and universities. So far, more than 150 colleges and universities are receiving Koch dollars and one wonders how long it will be before we see the results of this Koch cash in terms of curricula and ideology. There are claims that this money often comes with strings attached -- the donors want a say in hiring decisions. If that doesn't impinge on academic freedom, I don't know what does. 

You can read more about the Koch Brothers shady efforts to quash social security, how they tried to resegregate schools in North Carolina, their involvement in voter suppression and their efforts to fund climate change denial

In the film, the Koch Brothers' mandate is exposed for all to see. It's about greed, doing what's right for the 1%, corruption and attacking democracy. Their dealings need to be brought to light for all to see. Get the film, host a screening, expose the Koch Brothers once and for all. 

Facing up to the Extinction Crisis

This is the time of year I start going a little crazy. It has nothing to do with doing my taxes, which I did remarkably early this year, or any crazy weather phenomena. It has everything to do with our upcoming Ecofest (signup starts on Monday) and whether we’re going to finally start taking the crisis in species loss seriously enough to do something about it.

As I research topics to blog about, including news items this week like Whole Foods finally agreeing to stop selling overfished species, pesticides being linked to honeybee decline (bees pollinate one third of the food we eat such as tomatoes, beans, apples and strawberries, so their decline has a huge effect on our food supply), and the Koch brothers, starring in the new documentary, Koch Brothers Exposed (stay tuned for a screening on campus), funding climate change denialism (I’m late to the party here, Greenpeace reported this in 2010), I keep coming back to endangered and extinct species.

It’s a bewildering crisis, with the dubious distinction that many of the species that populated our picture books when we were kids and ultimately fired our imaginations and dreams are suffering enormous declines due to habitat loss, pollution, introduction of invasive species, over-exploitation and climate change. These are all human-induced causes yet we live our lives as if this is someone else’s problem. Ultimately, we are impoverishing not only our wellbeing, because we rely on ecosystem services (with the ecosystem’s resident species) for clean water and filtering the air, we are impoverishing our imaginations and the imaginations of future generations by allowing so many species under our stewardship to go extinct. In addition, apart from whatever benefit we may enjoy from sharing the planet with so many diverse species, each species has its own inherent right to exist.

What drives me crazy is how little attention we’re paying to it. Clean/alternative/green energy has been soaking up more than its fair share of the environmental news pie but the reality is that if we were to develop an eco-friendly fuel to power our homes, cars, businesses and so on today we would still have the problem of over-consumption of natural resources, deforestation and the main drivers of species loss. We need to show more imagination in understanding and solving our environmental problems. 

(I think what also drives me a little crazy is that we don't yet have a proper way to grieve for the species that we know we've lost. Since I heard the story of the golden toad on a trip to Costa Rica, I've been haunted by it: brilliantly colored males seen mating with females in temporary pools in the mountains of Monteverde for a few weeks in the spring... discovered in the 1960's, not seen outside the mating period, hundreds seen in the late 1980's, then only a few, then one year, only one golden toad searching in vain for a mate.)

This week in the New York Times, Thomas Lovejoy reported on the Planet Under Pressure conference in London. The upshot is that we’re failing to act with the scale and urgency needed. We spend our days worrying about the financial system, when really, we should be devoting our energies to understanding the workings of earth’s biological systems and making sure that they remain fully functioning. As Aldo Leopold wrote, “the number one rule of intelligent tinkering is saving all the parts”.

As always, the first step is to educate ourselves. Here at BU, you can check out the screening of the documentary Call of Life, at Rich Hall this Sunday at 7pm or at the Core House on Monday night (also at 7pm). We’ll provide the eco-friendly pizza. 

15 Random Things you Can Do to Promote Positive Environmental Change

1. Write to the US Post Office and tell them that a 12-inch long receipt for a book of stamps is wasteful and ask them to improve.

2. Find an environmental blog and write comments on several of its posts. Share its cool posts on your Facebook page.

3. Combat the disinformation promoted by the Koch brothers by supporting the work of Robert Greenwald.

4. Write to the Giving Pledge and thank the billionaires for giving their wealth to philanthropic causes (seriously). Ask them to support ways to improve the lives of the global poor (who live in resource-rich countries) and ways to reduce the consumption of the global rich (who live in comparatively resource-poor countries). While you’re at it, ask them to support programs that will educate women, because educated women have fewer children and we desperately need to halt our rapid population growth. (The site seems to be mostly for media inquiries, but hey if millions of people wrote in with their suggestions, maybe some of that would get communicated to those with the big wallets.)

5. Write to your congressperson and ask him/her to introduce legislation that will add one dollar to all US income taxes. Propose that the $130 million dollars raised be used to protect watersheds, protect national parks and the land around them, and to educate citizens on the importance of biodiversity.

6. Support Planned Parenthood.

7. Volunteer to be a distributor to the Endangered Species Condom Project

8. Write op-eds for religious newspapers and magazines and tell them to promote birth control. It’s going to be a lot easier to sustain seven billion people than nine billion, which is the projection for mid-century.

9. Change all your bills to e-bills.

10. Research some plant-a-tree for a dollar sites and plant ten trees. Or twenty. Summarize your research for some environmental blogs or Facebook pages.

11. Support the in-progress documentary, Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth. Let’s face it, the planet is finite and unlimited growth is unsustainable.

12. Calculate your ecological footprint and pledge to reduce it.

13. Find an eco-hero and publicize his/her work.

14. Join the Ecolympics. Get your friends to join. Like us on Facebook, comment on our blogs posts. Share them. Come on our nature walk, come to our cooking class, and come to our film nights. Check our calendar for events.

15. Write to us with other suggestions for our next installment of random ways to promote positive environmental change.