Facebook Backer Peter Thiel Wants You to Know Environmentalism Will Kill Us All
Peter Thiel's objectivism and anti-immigration donations were hard enough for Silicon Valley colleagues to stomach. This attack ad he helped fund against climate-change legislation should be even less popular among California's Tesla-driving, cleantech-obsessed venture capitalists.
Clarium Capital boss Thiel was an early investor in Facebook, where he sits on the board of directors. But Thiel, an outspoken campus conservative at Stanford, has had trouble reconciling his self-professed faith in science and innovation with the "fraud" he argues "major research is turning out to be."
So perhaps it's no surprise Thiel is eager to fight climate-change legislation grounded in "major research." He's a key backer of American Solutions for Winning the Future, Newt Ginrgrich's group to support oil drilling and coal mining. The political organization just produced a new attack ad to try and derail the Waxman-Markley climate change bill, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions and charge energy companies for exceeding them.
And boy is it terrifying! Maybe after all the bridges fall down, everyone's homes are foreclosed and millions of families starve, John Doerr can personally apologize to Thiel for trying to get rich off cap-and-trade.