Year 4, Month 10, Day 19: I’ve Been In Some Big Towns, And Heard Me Some Big Talk…

In the Boston Herald, a report about the campaign to get uber-swine David Koch off the WGBH board of directors:

Draped in a WBUR windbreaker,
Lee Stewart of 
Jamaica Plain called Koch — who has 
donated $18.6 million to ’GBH, 
including $10 million to the science program “NOVA” — “a climate 
denier, a polluter.”

“His presence is extremely 
offensive,” Stewart said. “People who are actively fighting to destroy the climate should not have equal political voice.”

Small and Stewart were among some 50 sign-waving activists who protested outside Channel 2’s Brighton studios before presenting a petition of 119,000 online signatures calling for Koch’s resignation. Among the protesters was an activist in an Elmo costume carrying a sign that read, “Elmo Love WGBH Elmo No Love Koch Lies.”

WGBH board chairman Amos Hostetter defended Koch, telling the protesters there’s no “political litmus test” for board members.

“Diversity is something we 
highly value,” he said.

“It’s not because we disagree with Mr. Koch politically,” Small said. “It’s because he is about the destruction of politics in America as we know it.”

Hostetter denied that trustees have any control over programming, and the board quickly moved on to 
other business.

The protest came just hours 
before “NOVA” aired a special on rising sea levels in the 
aftermath of Megastorm 
Sandy.

A Koch spokeswoman said he had no “immediate plans” to resign.

“He particularly enjoys WGBH’s outstanding program ‘NOVA,’ which he 
believes educates the public in a very entertaining way,” said spokeswoman Cristyne Nicholas. “As for climate change, Mr. Koch 
is interested in ensuring 
that energy policies are 
informed by sound science and economic reality,” she said.

But the activists said they’re just getting started.

“People aren’t going to let this go,” said Brad Johnson of Forecast the Facts. “We’re not going to stop.”

The Koch brothers are a blight on the world. October 10:

When his spokeswoman asserts that arch-conservative David Koch wants energy policies that are based on “sound science and economic reality,” it’s a little window into the thinking of a bazillionaire whose mindset is steeped in the McCarthy-era anti-communist hysteria of the John Birch Society.

Mr. Koch probably learned to trust medical expertise over the course of his experience as a cancer patient. I wonder: if 97 oncologists diagnosed a malignancy, while 3 said more tests were needed, would he start therapy…or would he decide that “sound science” demanded a rejection of the medical consensus?

Climatologists are our planetary physicians, and their diagnosis of the human causes and profound danger of climate change is overwhelmingly certain — as conclusive as the causal connection between smoking and cancer. Mr. Koch’s denialism isn’t based on sound science, and his rejection of policies that will end our dependence on fossil fuels is anything but economically realistic.

Warren Senders