Tag: Tom Steyer

The latest fashion among right-wing trolls?  Attempt to halt all criticism of the Koch Brothers by bringing up the name of environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer.  We have our billionaire political donors, you have yours - what's the difference?

Ah, false equivalency, the last refuge of the simple mind.  Well, in case you need some troll repellent, here are four fun facts demonstrating the enormous differences between Steyer & the Kochs:

1) Making money vs. losing it: As Steyer puts it, the Kochs' priorities "line up perfectly with their pocketbooks - and that's not true for us."

If you want to know why the Koch brothers went to the bother of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to create a vast infrastructure for casting doubt on climate science, well, it's not too hard to find a motive.  Just check out their stake in oil and petrochemicals, investments whose value is likely to go down the moment we put a price on carbon dioxide emissions.

They've clearly leveraged that investment with the millions they've spent indoctrinating rubes through their multitudinous Tea Party organizations such as Americans for Plutocracy (er, I mean "Prosperity").  Convince an army of ignorants that climate change is a Vast Conspiracy of Evil Scientists and you can spend more time relaxing at the golf course knowing that your oil and coal investments are safe and sound.