Billionaire Bowl I
by David Atkins
In the blue corner, billionaire Tom Steyer. In the red corner, billionaires Charles and David Koch. Let’s get ready to rumble:
Environmentalist billionaire Tom Steyer is again taking aim at the Koch brothers with a new television advertisement set to run this Sunday in Washington, D.C. and Wichita, Kan., the home base of Koch Industries.
The minimalist 15-second ad includes only the sound of crickets chirping against a black night sky. At the end, it says simply, “The Koch brothers’ response to a climate change debate with Tom Steyer.”Steyer, a California-based hedge fund investor who has made a political name for himself by opposing the Keystone XL pipeline and calling for action to address global warming, challenged Charles and David Koch last month to a debate on climate change.
While the ad — which was funded by Steyer’s political committee, NextGen Climate Action — implies that the Koch brothers did not respond to Steyer’s request, a spokeswoman for the industrialists declined the invitation in a statement to a Kansas newspaper. The spokeswoman told the Wichita Eagle earlier this month that the Koch brothers are “not experts on climate change” and the debate should take place “among the scientific community.”
Obviously, I’m deeply grateful to Mr. Steyer for using his vast wealth to fight the good fight on what is probably the biggest issue of our time.
But it’s more than a little depressing and disconcerting that the biggest hope climate change activists have of making a real dent here is that one billionaire decided he cared bad enough to focus on it.
If that’s the only model going forward, this country is in deep, deep trouble.
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