• ClimateGate Echo Chamber—At least twenty Koch-funded organizations have repeatedly rebroadcast, referenced and appeared as media spokespeople in the story, dubbed “ClimateGate,” of supposed malfeasance by climate scientists from stolen emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009. These organizations claim the emails prove a “conspiracy” of scientists and "proves" climate change is a hoax.
• More than $5 million to Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) for its nationwide “Hot Air Tour” campaign to spreading misinformation about climate science and opposing clean energy and climate legislation.
• More than $1 million to the Heritage Foundation, a mainstay of misinformation on climate and environmental policy issues.
• Over $1 million to the Cato Institute, which disputes the scientific evidence behind global warming, questions the rationale for taking climate action, and has been heavily involved in spinning the recent ClimateGate story.
• $800,000 to the Manhattan Institute, which has hosted Bjorn Lomborg twice in the last two years, a prominent media spokesperson who challenges and attacks policy measures to address climate change.
• $365,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), which advocates against taking action on climate change because warming is “inevitable” and expensive to address.
• $360,000 to Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP) which supported and funded An Inconvenient Truth...or Convenient Fiction, a film attacking the science of global warming and intended as a rebuttal to former Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth. PRIPP also threatened to sue the U.S. Government for listing the polar bear as an endangered species.
• $325,000 to the Tax Foundation, which issued a misleading study on the costs of proposed climate legislation.

The reports says such contributions are only part of the picture, because the full scope of direct contributions to organizations is not disclosed by individual Koch family members, executives, or from the company itself. But contributions through Koch’s political action committee (PAC) are a matter of public record. Since the beginning of the 2006 election cycle, Koch’s PAC spent more on contributions to federal candidates than any other oil-and-gas sector PAC. For that period, Koch Industries and its executives spent $2.51 million compared to next three biggest contributors: Exxon ($1.71 million), Valero ($1.68 million), and Chevron ($1.22 million).

Koch executives and their families wield political influence on climate change in other ways too, including direct federal lobbying and campaign contributions. Over the last few years, Koch Industries, Koch employees, and Koch family members:

• Spent $37.9 million from 2006 to 2009 for direct lobbying on oil and energy issues, outspent only by ExxonMobil ($87.8 million) and Chevron Corporation ($50 million).
• Spent $5.74 million in PAC money for candidates, committees, and campaign expenditures since the 2006 election cycle.
• Contributed at least $270,800 to federal political party committees since the 2006 election cycle.
• Gave $10,000 to Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2010,^[12] who, in January, proposed stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and lamented that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster has temporarily halted exploratory offshore drilling in the arctic planned by Shell Oil for summer 2010, a topic that even many conservative opponents of climate action have remained silent on in the face of the unfolding historic despoiling of the gulf.^[13][14]

Charles G. Koch co-founded the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington DC, with Edward H. Crane in 1977. ^[6] Recently, Koch Industries has become an aggressive opponent of climate legislation and a major funder of climate skeptics, including the Cato Institute. ^[7]

In 2005 Koch Industries acquired the American pulp and paper company Georgia-Pacific, which now operates as a subsidiary.^[8] Georgia-Pacific owns and operates the following mills:

• Naheola mill in Pennington, Alabama, which began operations in 1958. Currently, the principle products from the Naheola mill include both plate stock and cup stock for use in the food service market.
• The Crossett mill, located in Crossett, Arkansas, produces bleached paperboard grades, including folding carton, plate stock, bleached linerboard, and various cup stock grades.
• The recently acquired Brewton mill, located in Brewton, Alabama, produces folding carton, blister packaging, and skin packaging grades.
• Fort James Muskogee Mill Power Plant is a coal-fired power station in Muskogee, Oklahoma that provides power to Georgia-Pacific's Muskogee paper mill. ^[9]:

Koch Industries is also a major polluter. During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. Koch Industries was ranked number 10 on the list of Toxic 100 Air Polluters by the Political Economy Research Institute in March, 2010. [1][2]

In a study released in the spring of 2010, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the United States' top ten air polluters. ^[10]

If convicted, the company faced fines of up to $352 million, plus possible jail time for company executives. After George W. Bush became president, however, the U.S. Justice Department dropped 88 of the charges. Two days before the trial, John Ashcroft settled for a plea bargain, in which Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction of that amount.

The Brothers Koch: Rich, Political And Playing To Win