Charles and David Koch are worth a reported $21.5 billion each. | Reuters

Many people wonder why the U.S. has made little progress on passing climate change mitigation laws with real power, and the answer is simple:  Money.  The billionaires don’t like restrictions on their ability to make money (greed) so they are against anything, including the EPA’s focus on clean air and the health of all Americans, restricting their actions.

Big fossil fuel companies and their power, and people like the Koch Brothers and T. Boone Pickens are also stopping positive action on climate change.  The main way they do this is by aggressively protecting and funding fossil fuels.  The Koch Brothers and Pickens are powerful oil billionaires who made their dirty money from dirty fossil fuels that have polluted the U.S. for decades.

The difference between the Koch Brothers and Pickens is who they are influencing in our government:  The Kochs target the GOP with their money and their hatred of government and regulations.  Pickens targets the Democrats with his “Pickens Plan”.  The Pickens Plan is designed to make many members of Congress very wealthy while destroying the environment with gas fracking and Alberta tar sands, and some of the top beneficiaries of that wealth will be the Democrats who have invested in natural gas and oil sands in recent years.  The Kochs and Pickens have had resounding success, much to the detriment of our climate and our environment.

“Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee’s 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.

Nine of the 12 new Republicans on the panel signed a pledge distributed by a Koch-founded advocacy group ” Americans for Prosperity ” to oppose the Obama administration’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases. Of the six GOP freshman lawmakers on the panel, five benefited from the group’s separate advertising and grass-roots activity during the 2010 campaign.”  Source

Few people are writing about Pickens and his connections to environmental tragedies like the Alberta tar sands (he’s a major investor) but plenty of people are writing about the Koch brothers.  The Koch brothers are also involved in our media (FOX News) and Republican special interests, like union busting.

Every year the Koch brothers hold financial summits, which are secret meetings.  They swear the attendees to secrecy, and plan how to subvert the EPA and our government.  Read more about that here.

Last week brought really bad environmental news in New Hampshire, thanks to the Koch brothers:

“New Hampshire’s newly elected veto-proof Republican majority is swiftly consolidating the pro-pollution agenda provided by oil billionaires Charles and David Koch, the heads of Koch Industries.

The New Hampshire House passed HB 519 by 246-104 on Wednesday, repealing its membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), after a successful robocall campaign fronted by Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, one of the national Tea Party groups created [...]