Yesterday The Nation published a list of the ten top donors
to climate change deniers in Congress. It’s the usual suspects we’ve come to
expect, the Koch’s, Exxon Mobile, General Electric, and assorted other
villains.
The thing about this that I find most troubling is the
absolute disregard the people who authorize these donations have for their own
families. They clearly don’t care that they are condemning their children and
grandchildren and great grandchildren to lives on a dangerously toxic and
unpredictable planet. Everything that we are just beginning to experience now —
rising sea levels, severe temperatures, droughts, ever more powerful storms,
species of animals dying off — will only increase as the years go by. The only
conclusion a person can come to is that money is more important to them than
their families.
Let’s say you own a home and you have it inspected. The
inspector tells you that termites have been eating at the foundation of the
house, and that if you don’t have them exterminated soon, the house will
eventually collapse. If you’re Charles Koch, not only do you refuse to have the
pests exterminated because it’s too expensive, you then give the damaged house
to your children in your will. What kind of human being would do that?
It’s difficult to fathom such greed and callousness. These
people didn’t get where they are by being gullible idiots, so it’s impossible
for me to believe that they don’t know climate change is real. They are cynical
capitalists who worship money over everything else. They have no allegiance to a
country, a religion, an ideology or even their own family. Money is their god,
and it’s destroying the planet.
