The Los Angeles Times reported that Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Kansas-based Koch Industries, donated one million dollars to the campaign for California Proposition 23. Proposition 23 would suspend California’s global-warming law, known as AB 32, until the state’s unemployment rate dropped below 5.5%, a level achieved only three times in the last three decades.

According to the LA Times, California’s global warming law is designed to cut the state’s emission of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the end of this decade. A significant chunk of the reductions would come through regulations aimed at fostering alternative fuels and generating electricity from solar, wind and other alternative energy sources.

So it’s no surprise that the Koch brothers, Charles and David, are adamantly against AB 32. Heading one of the largest private companies in the world, the brothers made their billions in oil and happen to be major Tea Party backers.

Governor Schwarzenegger is not too pleased and, in a statement, called the contribution “extremely disappointing.” He described Proposition 23 backers as “a handful of out-of state polluters supporting … the oil companies’ dirty energy proposition.”

It’s cowardly at best to see oil billionaires hide behind the issue of unemployment to further their energy agenda and self interests. Hopefully, Californians will see through the Koch brothers’ disingenuous and hypocritical concern for California’s unemployment rate.

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Photo credit: Greenpeace USA 2010 via Flickr