An energy-intensive industrial coalition spent tens of millions of dollars to ensure the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Energy Alliance, the Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity and forty other free-market think tanks that signed an open letter urging Donald Trump to pull out were bankrolled by, among others, ExxonMobil and the Koch Brothers, the Kansas-based billionaires who control refineries and pipelines that process 600,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
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Remove a truck’s catalytic converter, install a ‘smoke switch’ that tricks the engine into burning more diesel than it needs, and before you know it you’re rolling coal, purging impenetrable clouds of soot through your exhaust pipe on I-10 in Texas, enough to repel the prig in the Prius riding your tail. Those of us who consider deliberate pollution a vice can forget that there are others who not only don’t care, but revel in it. But Donald Trump – who is today signing an executive order aimed at unravelling Barack Obama's climate legacy – hasn’t forgotten them.