'Dark Money' explains why climate change conversation is distorted

Charles Koch - one of the
American billionaires
behind the rise of the
radical right.

I recently finished Jane Mayer's remarkable new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. And it's left me more pessimistic that the world will be able to come to terms with what's known as nonlinear or abrupt climate change.

I'll start with the politics.

Mayer, a staff writer at the New Yorker, explains in the book how brothers Charles and David Koch, along with several other U.S. billionaires, managed to create a parallel financial structure to the Republication National Committee.

Through hundreds of millions of dollars that was raised outside of the party, these libertarian-minded businessmen have helped elect right-wing politicians more loyal to their ideas than they are to the Republican establishment.

The "extremist upstarts" or "young guns", as Mayer refers to them, became a powerful bloc in Congress after the 2010 midterm elections. These Tea Party radicals tried to block payments that had already been appropriated in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"Many owed more to the Kochs and other radical rich backers than they did to the party," Mayer writes in Dark Money. "The White House was under the misimpression that stolid business forces within the Republican Party would see the threat to the economy and force the radicals back from the edge."

Leading the charge was the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity.

Read Charlie Smith’s story in The Georgia Strait - “On Earth Day 2016, this is no time to be smug about the state of the climate.”