When billionaire libertarian David Koch died this week following a decades-long battle with prostate cancer, the Arctic was rapidly melting. The Amazon rainforest was on fire. And the Earth had just experienced its hottest month in recorded human history.

These planetary conditions mimicked closely what scientists had tried to warn the public about 30 years ago, when they first sounded the alarm on climate change. They were also the warnings Koch worked most of his career to make sure the American public never accepted, nor did anything about.

At the time of his death, David Koch was one of the richest men in the world, having amassed a fortune of approximately $49 billion through his part-ownership of his oil tycoon father’s business, Koch Industries. Along with his brother Charles Koch, he used that fortune to fund a powerful yet secretive right-wing libertarian movement, known by its critics as the Koch network.

I asked Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, to reflect on David Koch’s climate legacy.



It feels weird to be calling you, asking you about all the terrible things this person did now that he is dead. But that is sort of what your book was about, right?



Well, here’s how I would put it. I don’t think David Koch believes what he did was terrible. And my book documents really carefully what David and Charles Koch did politically and specifically regarding the issue of climate change. So I don’t feel bad about it at all today, because I think David and Charles Koch believed deeply in what they were doing.