Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Kochs pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers. The volume of Koch Industries toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amhersts Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of Americas air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nations waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Kochs climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year. rollingstone/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 17:58:20 +0000
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