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The American Tea Party phenomenon unfortunately has a long arm, reaching all the way to the international climate negotiations currently underway in Copenhagen, Denmark.

With their outrageous signs and over-the-top rhetoric, the Tea Party claims can be easily dismissed as fringe players, but they are nevertheless playing a role in blocking action in Washington on the issue of climate change.

This is something the fossil fuel industry and their think tank network are very aware of and are using to their full advantage. One need not look any further than the notorious Americans for Prosperity, one of the leading groups organizing Tea Party attacks on healthcare reform, and now climate solutions.

The AFP is an organization that has recieved millions of dollars in funding over the years from the Koch Family Foundations - Koch Industries Inc., is the largest private energy company in the United States and a major Big Oil force. When it comes to funding the right-wing think tanks and the climate denial industry, Koch makes ExxonMobil look like a minor player.

AFP is a non-profit organization that will not disclose its donors when asked. However, Media Transparency shows that Americans for Prosperity, and their previous incarnation “Citizens for a Sound Economy,” have received over $13 million from the Koch foundations. 

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by Sheril Kirshenbaum

It's not clear how the Obama administration will move on climate change, but they must focus on a single defining message: advancing national economic interests.

Just a week ago, Barack Obama addressed the nation that had just elected him the 44th President of the United States. When he named America’s greatest challenges, “a planet in peril” was a centerpiece. After the Bush administration’s eight-year war on our air, oceans, and wildlife, concerned citizens everywhere had justified reason to celebrate, feeling that they too had possibly won a great victory that night.