“In the fiery battle over Prop 23—Big Oil’s pet project to suspend California’s landmark clean energy and climate legislation—a David and Goliath battle is brewing.”
This is the opening sentence of a great article by Jess Leber of Change.org on an awesome debate challenge in California.
Apparently, a student from Cal State L.A., Joel Francis, is challenging Charles Koch, “the evil gazillionaire who has thrown millions into the Prop 23 effort and has a long history of funding the climate denial machine,” to a debate. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch.
But there’s more…
“Should Koch ignore the dare, as it is widely expected he will do, Francis has vowed to march down to Koch’s tycoon headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, to deliver his debate letter in person.”
Francis is particularly pissed since Koch is trying to undermine good California legislation by throwing millions and millions of dollars into campaign ads in California and he doesn’t even live there.
“If you are going to try to hurt the economy of a state you don’t even live in, then you ought to have the courage to explain yourself in person,” Francis says in the video above.
Francis isn’t the only one gathering good attention in the fight against Koch and Prop 23, though. Jess writes:
Students have come out in full force—from a 6th grader who recently won a science fair with her project opposing the measure to Google founder Larry Page’s wife, a Stanford PhD student, who gave $100,000. In recent days, a whole host of celebrities have thrown their weight behind trumping the act, including Bill Gates and James Cameron, who both made big donations; Robert Redford, who taped a “No on 23” robocall; and David Arquette, who debuted a video pitting his karate skills against Big Oil.
The Prop 23 opposition got its biggest endorsement two days ago, when President Obama came out against it; in a statement, his administration called the measure “a veiled attempt by corporate polluters to block progress towards a clean energy economy.”
Action Step: Support Francis by signing a petition telling Koch to say “yes” to the debate.
