Activists protest ExxonMobil shareholder meeting

As ExxonMobil executives and board members arrived at the shareholder meeting in Dallas on May 30, they were confronted by about 40 activists with signs, saying "Exxpose Exxon" and "No Planet, No Dividends." But inside the downtown symphony hall, about 450 Exxon Mobil shareholders mostly sided with management and the board on 17 resolutions. They thwarted attempts to force the company to set goals for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and turned back an effort to oust Exxon director Michael Boskin. With growing scientific consensus about the role of greenhouse gases in global warming, more than a dozen shareholders stood up at the company's annual meeting to ask the board to do something about the political and financial risk of emitting greenhouse gases and making fuels that contribute to global warming. Thirty-one percent of shareholders backed a proposal that the company set quantitative targets for lower greenhouse gas emissions from both its operations and its products. "Why has our company seemingly put so much effort into making itself public enemy No. 1 on climate change?" said Andrew Logan, with the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which represents some big state pension funds that hold Exxon shares. But Exxon chief executive Rex W. Tillerson replied that he was "not going to put a banner up" about global warming. He asserted that lawmakers and companies should be careful before adopting "life-changing decisions" for future generations. Tillerson said Exxon would remain focused on finding and producing oil and gas, which he said would account for about the same share of global energy supplies for at least the next 25 years, despite the growth of renewable fuels. "ExxonMobil is double-crossing both the public and policy makers with its latest spin on climate change. It's avoiding real changes and continuing to fund groups that purposefully distort the science of global warming," said Exxpose Exxon campaign director Shawnee Hoover. Tillerson justifies the company's position to press and shareholders by repeating that 80 percent of the world's future energy supplies will come from fossil fuels. The numbers he says, are supported by projections made by the International Energy Agency (IEA). "The IEA projection assumes no government action is taken to limit global warming pollution and is based upon trends of the past several decades that do not reflect the changes in energy policies currently underway," says Tim Greeff of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "For Exxon to base its actions today on decade-old trends is like standing in a rainstorm without an umbrella because last week's forecast said it would be sunny," said Greeff. Environmental concerns were also behind the targeting of Boskin, who chairs the Exxon board's public issues committee. California Controller John Chiang, Connecticut Treasurer Denise L. Nappier, shareholder advocate Robert A.G. Monks and Sister Patricia Daly, executive director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, had complained that Boskin had refused to discuss Exxon's potential financial exposure to climate change or what they called its "failure" to take short-term actions to pare emissions. They said Boskin refused five invitations over the past 18 months to meet two dozen institutional investment fund managers.