Oil Billionaire Money Comes To Klamath River Dam Removal Fight
A recent video attacking Klamath River dam removal in Siskiyou County trotted out all the usual falsehoods (the dams protect salmon, the removal will “devastate” Siskiyou County ranchers, coho aren’t native to the Klamath, yadda yadda…).
Frankly, that’s about par for the course up here.
What is remarkable about the (professionally produced) video can be summed up in two bullet points:
- At one point, County Supervisor Grace Bennett actually invokes the United Nations (Agenda 21) as one of the reasons the government’s trying to remove the dams
- Oil billionaire money is now making an appearance in the Klamath dam removal fight
Big Money (And Black Helicopters) Come To Siskiyou County
You can’t help but notice this video was produced by Americans For Prosperity, which turns out not to be a grassroots organization, but a front group for the Koch Brothers.
If you don’t know who the Koch Brothers are, they’re oil company billionaires (Koch Industries is the second-largest privately owned company in the USA), and they’re slowly (and reluctantly) becoming famous for secretly funding disinformation campaigns about climate change. (The New Yorker published an excellent article on the Koch Brothers here.)
In thinly populated Siskiyou County — where campaign signs are often hand-stenciled affairs created in the candidate’s garage — it’s hard to fathom the impact of billionaire oil money on the fight to remove the Klamath Dams
The whole affair has already morphed from a decision about relicensing privately owned dams which will begin losing $20 million year and are extincting salmon populations into a fight against socialist government black helicopter oppression.
It would all make more sense if there wasn’t all this peer-reviewed science suggesting the dams do a lot of damage and very little actual good.
At several points in the video ranchers repeat the claim that they’re the best stewards of the river and the area, yet their plan for preventing coho salmon extinction is to pretend the coho don’t actually exist.
Stellar work, guys.
As a resident of Siskiyou County, I’ve grown used to watching the county drag itself into one bad fight after another while the supervisors generally act like fools, and I can say with some certainty the disinformation that characterizes this fight will flow as freely as before.
It’s just that suddenly, that disinformation is being funded by billionaires with a long history of doing exactly that sort of thing.
See you watching the game change seemingly overnight, Tom Chandler.
It’s sad that the Koch guys are on the wrong side of this. They could fund a hell of a bomber fleet (which is something to keep in mind).
Steve Z(Quote)
Given the pace of government agencies, I think one or two WWII-era planes would be enough (flying two in formation would generate a lot of more press). It’s a shame that those in power can’t equal the visionary sense of a couple of dumb fly fishing bloggers…
Tom Chandler(Quote)
Welcome to my world (Wisconsin). Our current governor is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers. No environmental concern is too big to obliterate.
David P.(Quote)