Major Climate Deniers Start To Reverse Course After Their Dude Ranches Go Up In Flames
Charles Koch asks if Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is single. “She has a lot to teach me about climate change,” he says. “Plus, she’s hot.”
Many of the leading climate change deniers have suddenly changed their positions and are now becoming leaders in the movement to adopt stringent worldwide carbon emissions standards immediately, according to several coordinated press releases.
The first announcement came from the offices of Koch Industries. The press release stated that, “as a result of deep reflection, study, and his own personal experiences, Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, has fully accepted that global warming is real and poses an imminent threat to mankind’s survival.”
The statement went on to explain that this is part of the continued evolution Mr. Koch spoke to the Wall Street Journal about in November 2020, when he expressed “regret” for fueling so much partisanship over the past five decades.
His Press Officer, Merry Merkin, was asked what had prompted Mr. Koch’s sudden turnaround on the climate.
“Mr. Koch reads widely,” Merkin explained. “Recently, he’s been reading fewer climate denial books funded by organizations like the ExxonMobil Foundation and Koch Affiliated Foundations and more books written by actual scientists.” She added, “This has been a long time coming. It’s not some sudden flip-flop, if you will.”
When questioned about her choice of words, Ms. Merkin emphatically denied she was taking a cheap shot at a recent SEC disclosure revealing Mr. Koch had made a profit of $58 million in two months by investing in the world’s leading maker of flip-flops, the popular rubber beach shoes. The SEC investigation questioned whether Mr. Koch was trying to accelerate global warming to increase sales of the ubiquitous $8 sandals and, thus, the value of his investment.
“Mr. Koch is a very savvy investor able to see around the curve better than most. Suggesting he was trying to accelerate global warming to sell more flip-flops is more disgusting than…toenail fungus. He just noticed that a lot more people were wearing flip-flops at the beach during heat waves.”
When asked the last time Mr. Koch, the 85-year-old Kansas native, had been to the beach, Ms. Merkin said, “Wichita has a river, you know!”
Joining Koch with their own press announcements were wealthy donors and foundations who, over the years, have given to organizations that engaged not only in climate denial but active support of deregulating carbon emissions. They issued a group announcement a half hour after Koch’s press release.
It read, in toto: “Yeah, whatever Charles said.”
Many climate activists are arguing that Koch is laying a trap.
“It’s like Milo the Dachshund and Bonedigger the Lion,” said one well-known activist. “Sure, they’re friends now. But one day, Bonedigger is going to get hungry and, BAM!, Milo is going to end up in Bonedigger’s kitty litter as a pile of lion skat with a tail sticking out of it. And that’s what’s going to happen to Earth if Koch is pulling a fast one. We’ll be nothing more than a dead piece of steaming lion…a dead rock…floating through space…a planet that gave us Charlize Theron that’s now…that billions of people called home and…Whatever! You know what I mean.”
When Merkin was questioned about whether Mr. Koch’s change of heart might be the result of seeing his 100,000 acre timber ranch in British Columbia — purportedly purchased to provide him with an escape from the worsening effects of climate change — go up in smoke in drought-driven wildfires, Mr. Koch, dressed as Smokey the Bear, surprised the assembled media by stepping out from behind a large cardboard cutout display of a redwood tree and stepping to the podium.
“Look, folks,” Koch began, “we either all start driving electric cars, or we move up close to the Arctic Circle and try to catch some of the runoff from the melting glaciers. Of course, I already own half the land in Canada just below the Arctic, so I figured eventually all of you and half of Central America were going to show up on my doorstep, because I’ll be the only one with any water. Talk about a melting pot!” Koch said, then doubled over in laughter at his own joke.
When asked to comment on the recent declaration by Senator Ron Johnson, (R) WI, that “Climate change is bullshit!”, Mr. Koch replied tersely: “Senator Johnson is bullshit and I will not be contributing to any of his future political campaigns.”
After learning of Koch’s comments, Senator Johnson met briefly with reporters. “As usual, the Fake Media completely misquoted and misconstrued my words. What I said was, NOT believing in climate change are bullshit.”
When asked if this meant he was breaking with former President Donald Trump, the Senator responded, “Who?”
