A satire music video in the style of the 1985 collaboration “We Are The World,” highlights the flawed thinking of climate change deniers, with the help of some celebrities. Mocking the ultra-wealthy Koch brothers, Beau Bridges plays both David and Charles Koch, and invites “the world’s hottest conservative pop stars to sing a song.”
The Koch brothers are some of the wealthiest Americans and their company, Koch Industries, is infamously one of the worst polluters in the country. Last year, Rolling Stone reported that “Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's 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.” They are also give millions of dollars in funding support to Republican electoral candidates.
“You might know us as a couple of chill guys who own the Republican Party,” says the Charles Koch character.
“But what you may not know is that there’s a major problem plaguing our society,” the fake David Koch says. “Idiots who claim that climate change is real. Folks, climate change is pure fiction.”
Nineteen stars and The Silver Lake Chorus of Los Angeles explain that droughts and earthquakes used to be common, and snow still exists. Actors Emily Osment and Darren Criss kick off the song with a duet, and are joined by Ben Feldman, Estelle, Atlas Genius, JR JR, Ed Weeks, Problem, Kelley Jakle, Open Mike Eagle, Bushwalla, Ta'Rhonda Jones, Cardiknox, and others as it progresses through lyrics such as, “Polar bears are fine, and the ice caps aren’t melting. Scientists are full of shit, and fossil fuels are helping!”
“NASA’s wrong, the oceans aren’t rising,” Estelle sings. “Alarmists are revising history.”
Republican presidential candidates Senator Marco Rubio (Florida), Senator Ted Cruz (Texas), and former Florida governor Jeb Bush are named as those who agree that “these temperatures are normal.” Listeners are enthusiastically told, “don’t fret!”
The video was produced by comedy website Funny or Die in partnership with liberal climate advocacy group ClimateTruth.org, formerly known as Forecast the Facts. The video has attracted a fair amount of positive press from left-leaning publications, but the number of comments on the YouTube video from climate change deniers calls attention to the reality that many Americans do believe as the song says, “Liberals are twisting facts, it’s a big conspiracy.”
NASA states that 97 percent of scientists agree that human activities are causing climate change, but a poll from Yale, Gallup, and Clearvision demonstrated that only 48 percent of Americans believed there is consensus within the scientific community, and 29 percent believe that global warming is mostly caused by natural changes in the environment.