By Peter Galuszka
A major funder of Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe plans on putting $100 million into this year’s mid-term election races to warn of the danger of climate change and beat back global warming deniers and their conservative financiers.
Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund founder, plans on targeting the Florida gubernatorial race where Rick Scott, who does not believe that climate change is manmade, is running for election.
Last year, Steyer (photo) helped McAuliffe outraise Republican Kenneth Cuccinelli in political contributions and defeat him. The former attorney general had made an issue of global warming and initiated a campaign to investigate Michael Mann, a former University of Virginia climatologist, who believes that human activity does contribute to global warming. Steyer gave the McAuliffe campaign $11 million.
Conservatives are well-funded by their own advocates, notably the Koch brothers of Kansas whom the Washington Post reports helped raise $400 million for the 2012 elections. The Koch brothers raise much of their funding through political action committees and non-profits such as Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute.
Democrats who likewise have pumped money to raise concerns of global warming include former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Coincidentally, the news of Steyer’s donation plans comes just after the release of a new book “The Sixth Extinction” by New Yorker magazine staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert.
The book notes that the earth has seen five significant extinctions of living organisms and now faces a sixth one that is caused by mankind and carbon emissions. The book has won favorable reviews in such media outlets as the “Wall Street Journal.”
