Switzerland’s first zero-carbon technology park, blueFACTORY, is now under construction in Fribourg on the grounds of the old Cardinal brewery. The site, which covers 53,000 square meters, will include start-ups, research platforms, shops, restaurants and art galleries. The signature goal of this tax-payer-funded enterprise is to maintain a zero-carbon footprint.

http://www.bluefactory.ch/en/le-projet/

The laudable blueFACTORY project is blemished, however, by the presence in its vicinity of six companies which are responsible for enormous quantities of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the entire world.

Charles, David, and Bill Koch maintain companies in Fribourg to support their extensive oil, petroleum coke, and fertilizer businesses. Charles and David, who have established nine companies in the Fribourg tax haven since the early 1970’s, still have three companies domiciled at Chemin des Primevères 45. Bill Koch, who is less well-known than his other billionaire brothers, has three companies which are domiciled at Rue Simplon 13, just around the corner from blueFACTORY (see map below).

Bill Koch is called “the petcoke king.” He is the CEO of Oxbow Carbon, which describes itself as “the worldwide leader in fuel-grade petcoke sourcing and sales” -- its trades amount to 11 million tons a year. Charles and David also trade in the dirty commodity, and huge piles of their dusty petcoke have been contaminating Chicago’s South Side along the Calumet River. Petroleum coke is the granular residue that is left over from the refinement of bitumen, the filthy “tar sand” that some are proposing to transport from Canada across America’s vast Ogallala Aquifer to Gulf Coast refineries via the controversial Keystone pipeline. The Kochs’ petcoke, which is one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide, per unit burned, will be shipped to booming Chinese power plants to fuel their ravenous appetite for cheap fossil fuel (petcoke has a market price of about 1/3 that of coal).

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-u-s-exports-global-warming-20140203

In addition to being major polluters whose companies have paid hefty fines in the United States, all three brothers are ardent anthropogenic climate-change deniers. Charles and David have even managed to convince scores of American legislators to sign a pledge that they will not vote for any bills that address global warming unless they are accompanied by tax cuts.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/koch-pledge-tied-to-congressional-climate-inaction

Through an elaborate web of activist groups and “think tanks,” Charles and David have used their enormous personnel wealth—they are ranked as the 5th and 6th wealthiest persons in the world—to fund anti-environmental groups to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Since 2008, it is believed that they have been supporting the climate change counter-movement through foundations which conceal the sources of their funding.

http://www.polluterwatch.com/blog/secret-climate-denial-finance-koch-and-others-hide-tens-millions-through-donors-trust-donors-ca

Brother Bill, for his part, told The Palm Beach Daily News (Oct. 18, 2013) that supporters of a carbon tax are on LSD! Bill has spent millions of dollars to block the construction of an environment-saving wind farm on Nantucket Sound because he says it would blemish his view of the ocean from his Cape Cod, Massachusetts beach house.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/Bill-Koch/

As staunch anti-tax libertarians, Charles and David Koch oppose all governmental social projects: they would defund Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care) , the minimum wage, unions and collective bargaining, public education, and of course, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These programs grew out of the social justice movement of the 19th Century. Cardinal Gaspard Mermillod’s Union de Fribourg, the “think tank” which spearheaded Pope Leo XIII’s groundbreaking social justice encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) was a huge influence in granting workers the right to defend themselves by forming unions. Fribourg’s beer was renamed “Cardinal” after Bishop Mermillod was elevated to the rank of cardinal in recognition of his efforts to promote worker rights. Thus, the site of the Cardinal brewery where the zero-carbon blueFACTORY is being built can be considered a shrine to the same Catholic social-justice principles which the Koch brothers have been systematically trying to undermine.

Petition text:

Directors of blueFACTORY, Mayor Clément, and Bishop Morerod:

Fribourg, Switzerland is currently building a zero-carbon technology park: blueFACTORY. In the vicinity of this environmentally-friendly project, the American industrialists Charles, David, and Bill Koch have established six companies which support their far-flung fossil fuel businesses. The Kochs are major polluters. They are also major climate-change deniers who have spent untold millions to discredit the efforts of environmental groups to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Koch brothers have no business being in Fribourg near a zero-carbon technology park! Please ask the Koch brothers to wind down their Fribourg operations.