Minnesota AG Suing Koch Industries Should Be An Example to the Nation

 In June 2020, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and the American Petroleum Institute for deceiving consumers about the effects of climate change. 

We applaud Ellison for filing a consumer protection lawsuit. And we want to let him know that unfortunately, he’s not alone. Ellison is highlighting a poison that has been infiltrating states across the nation -- both literally, through polluted waterways, soil, and air, and figuratively, through dark money donations in higher education that promote climate misinformation. 

In our Open Letter to Charles Koch, we called out the Koch network’s funding of campus centers that are instrumental in creating lax environmental regulations. During the Trump administration, some of these centers’ polluter-friendly recommendations were implemented, directly harming the 68% of Black Americans who live next to coal-fired power plants, incinerators, chemical factories, and other polluters. The increased risk of air and water contamination in these marginalized communities results in chronic health conditions like cancer, asthma, and disease of the heart, kidney, liver, and lung. 

In Washington DC, at George Washington University, we’re pushing for the school’s administration to take a stand on the Regulatory Studies Center, which almost universally advocates against regulation and relies primarily on researchers with ties to groups funded by the Koch family. The Trump administration acted on many of the center’s polluter-friendly recommendations, such as reducing the costs that the government attributes to greenhouse gases and raising the bar for issuing new energy efficiency standards. We’re also agitating at Tufts University, where their Center for State Policy Analysis (CSPA) has Koch-linked funding, raising questions about the independence of the center’s policy analysis. 

Minnesota is not alone -- both in dealing with the climate impacts of the Koch network and in fighting to make things right. We hope that the rest of the country is inspired by Ellison to push back against the harm the Koch network creates in the name of profit over people. We want more states to shine a light on the ways the Koch network and fossil fuel industry have impacted their states with regard to climate change and environmental racism. This case can set a precedent for other states to take action on behalf of consumers, and even lead to national levels of scrutiny.

We have run out of time to turn the tide of climate change, and those whose power and pockets continue putting profit over human life need to be held accountable.