US billionaire bankrolls attacks on Jeb Bush over climate change

Tom Steyer, the green billionaire aiming to counteract the conservative Koch brothers, is taking aim at Jeb Bush as environmentalists say his scepticism over climate change makes him "vulnerable" as a US presidential candidate.

Mr Steyer's lieutenants on Monday set out a strategy for discrediting Republican contenders who express doubts about global warming, while simultaneously tying them to the Koch brothers, but plan to put a special focus on Mr Bush, as the early GOP frontrunner.

Chris Lehane, chief strategist for Mr Steyer's NextGen Climate Action group, told reporters: "We think that Bush in particular is especially vulnerable on this issue because of the state he's from [Florida], the type of campaign he is running, and the positions that he has already articulated."

After limited success last year when Mr Steyer spent more than $70m seeking to make the climate an issue in US midterm elections, the former hedge fund manager will try again in 2016 to challenge the political clout of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists.

The brothers have big investments in fossil fuels and have pledged to raise nearly $900m through their own political network. It backs Republican candidates who tend to either claim man-made climate change is a fiction or say they are not qualified to assess the science.

Mr Lehane would not say how much Mr Steyer would plough into the 2016 campaign, but said: "We will spend what it takes." Tempering expectations, he added that whatever Mr Steyer spends "is still a drop in the Big Oil bucket compared to what the other side is spending".

On Mr Bush, he said the former Florida governor "has essentially been running an electability campaign" based on the idea that he would have the best chance of beating Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

But he said Mr Bush would not be electable with many young voters, who are a crucial cohort of the 2016 electorate, if he continued to express uncertainty over climate change. "He is no different than the other [Republican candidates]," Mr Lehane said.

Climate experts say Florida - also the home state of Senator Marco Rubio, another Republican contender - is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. NextGen has already mocked Mr Bush for resorting to the popular Republican dodge: "I'm not a scientist."

The group's officials say polling indicates that it is increasingly untenable for political candidates to demonstrate anything other than concern about climate change, as a growing proportion of voters say it is one of their top worries.

But Republicans - who often lay out a binary policy choice between economic prosperity and action on climate change - say many Americans will continue to vote for jobs and their immediate economic interests ahead of moves to curb global warming.

NextGen is preparing to a range of stunts and attacks tailored to each of the main Republican presidential aspirants.

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The climate group will also send out staff to follow Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, on an upcoming trip to Europe, where it will try to embarrass him in front of national leaders who have taken action on climate change.

Mr Lehane repeatedly attacked the Koch brothers. "The Kochs are putting their own economic self-interests above preserving the integrity of our democracy, the future of our children," he said. Later, he added: "They have effectively acquired the Republican party and repurposed it."

A spokesman for Freedom Partners, a Koch-backed group, said it would "remain focused on advancing free-market principles and a free society. Tom Steyer and Chris Lehane have already spent millions demonising job creators and they have little to show for it."

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