Scientists Call for David Koch's Museum Board Resignations
- March 24, 2015 22:07
A group of scientists sent an open letter to America's largest natural history museums calling for a severance of ties with the fossil fuel industry, specifically the billionaire Koch brothers of Koch Industries.
The call was made for the museums to distance themselves from “those who profit from fossil fuels or fund lobby groups that misrepresent climate science," reports the Washington Post.
Three dozen scientists who drafted the letter want David Koch in particular off the boards of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
David Koch gave $35 million to the Smithsonian for a new dinosaur hall in 2012 and $20 million for New York's museum, among his many other gifts to various insitutions and causes.
The new Natural History Museum, which organizes pop-up exhibitions at existing institutions, is behind the moverment.
"We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution," the letter states. A petition signed by 12,500 people, so far, accompanies the letter.
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![A 19th century Seven Piece "Chrysanthemum" Pattern Sterling Silver Coffee & Tea Service, which was exhibited in the Tiffany & Co. booth at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago](/images/c/78/96/Tiffany___Co__Makers_Seven_Piece_"Chrysanthem100x100_c.jpg "A 19th century Seven Piece \"Chrysanthemum\" Pattern Sterling Silver Coffee & Tea Service, which was exhibited in the Tiffany & Co. booth at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago")
