Koch Brothers Admit Inventing Fracking to Pull Attention Away From Global Warming

WICHITA, Kans. — In a stunning revelation today, CEO of Koch Industries and conservative philanthropist, Charles Koch, admitted that he and his brother invented the practice of hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as fracking) for the sole purpose of making people forget about global warming.

“[Exxon Mobil CEO] Rex [Tillerson] and [Royal Dutch Shell CEO] Pete [Voser] called me up and said ‘you know Charles, this whole global warming thing is bad for business,’” said Koch. “So, I suggested we do something so ecologically absurd that people would forget about carbon footprints and vehicle emission standards. And viola, large-scale fracking was born.”

Hydraulic fracturing is the process of drilling deep into the earth—1,000 feet or more—and finding hidden pockets of oil and natural gas by demolishing the ground with pressurized liquid. “We figured that if environmentalist hate standard oil drilling, then they would go ape shit over our just blowing shit up,” said Charles’s brother David Koch, Executive VP of Koch Industries. “We figured that if environmentalists became obsessed with how we got our oil and gas, they’d stop bothering us about how much we used.”

Charles then cackled for a moment, before adding, “If you do something horribly irresponsible, suddenly nobody cares about SUVs. The left has an attention span of about 10 minutes,” he said.

The brothers confided to reporters that fracking was actually their fallback option. “Originally, we told the oil companies to figure out a way to make cars run on puppies,” said David. “But they didn’t have the balls.”

“We were actually surprised when such large-scale fracking was allowed,” said Charles, while throwing darts at pictures of environmentalists. “We figured we would just put up a fight to cause a diversion. We never imagined anyone would be stupid enough to let us do it.”