ExxonMobil
is in its climate change bunker and won’t let reality in
Still
stonewalling, the oil giant banned the Guardian from its AGM this
week. But even its shareholders are starting to hear the gale-force
winds blowing outside
Damian Carrington
Friday 27 May 2016
12.36 BST
When one of the
world’s largest pension funds tells the biggest oil company on the
planet that it faces an existential threat, there are stormy times
ahead. The Guardian wanted to give you the latest weather report from
inside ExxonMobil’s annual general meeting in Dallas on Wednesday,
but the newspaper’s reporter was banned.
Battening down the
hatches and whistling as the winds of climate change threaten its
business has been the oil giant’s strategy for decades. The problem
for ExxonMobil is, the winds are approaching gale force and the
people who own the company - its shareholders - are increasingly
worried about the damage.
ExxonMobil investors
worth $10 trillion backed a motion at the AGM asking the company to
tell them what would happen to its bottom line if governments meet
their pledge to slash carbon emissions and halt global warming. The
company tried to stop shareholders even voting on the motion, until
the US Securities and Exchange Commission blew that objection away.
Getting answers out
of the ExxonMobil bunker is not easy. Even the largest shareholders
are barred from speaking to its directors, a situation described as
“extraordinary” by Anne Simpson, head of corporate governance at
Calpers, the $290bn pension fund for California’s state employees.
“Exxon is an outlier: a minority of one,” she says.
Since March 2015
ExxonMobil has issued a stock response to the Guardian’s enquiries,
saying it refuses to comment “because of the Guardian’s lack of
objectivity on climate-change reporting, demonstrated by its
partnership with anti-oil and gas activists and its campaign against
companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including
newspapers”.
That’s a serious
charge, so let’s take it in steps. The first serious question is
whether ExxonMobil is in a position to judge what objectivity –
“not being influenced by personal feelings or opinions in
considering and representing facts” – actually is.
The company knew of
climate change as early as 1977 but spent the next 30 years and at
least £30m promoting climate-change denial and blocking action.
While telling shareholders there was too much uncertainty about
global warming to take action, it was building exploration facilities
that allowed for the sea level rise it knew was on the way. As a
result the company is under investigation by attorney generals from
17 US states.
Perhaps more
objective is the unanimous agreement by the world’s governments
that there is “the need for an effective and progressive response
to the urgent threat of climate change”. Or the conclusion of the
biggest scientific endeavour in history, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change, which concluded global warming is set to inflict
“severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts”.
But ExxonMobil’s
specific charge is that the Keep it in the Ground campaign damaged
the Guardian’s objectivity. The campaign was narrowly focused, in
asking the world’s two biggest health charities to sell off their
fossil fuel investments on the basis that burning all oil, gas and
coal would cause catastrophic climate change. The fact that investors
controlling $3.4 trillion (including the Guardian) have committed to
divest from fossil fuels suggests many found these arguments
compelling.
Campaigns are
commonplace in UK newspapers and readers understand the line between
these and regular reporting. Transparency is the key and the targets
of the Guardian campaign were given space to make their
counter-arguments and the whole process was made public in a
behind-the-scenes podcast series.
The climate-change
motion prompted a record shareholder rebellion of 38% at ExxonMobil’s
AGM this week, but was defeated. So investors have been denied
transparency on the impacts of climate change on the company. These
investors include huge pension funds from New York, California and
the Netherlands, the Church of England, the world’s biggest
sovereign wealth fund - built from Norway’s oil riches - and banks
and insurers such as HSBC and Axa. Will ExxonMobil dismiss these as
“anti-oil and gas activists” too?
ExxonMobil’s final
barb – that it is a company “that provides energy necessary for
modern life” – is facile. When a storm is coming, you change your
clothes. If we had always lived tomorrow as we lived yesterday, we’d
still be wearing bear skins. People have little choice but to use
fossil fuels today, but clean energy is fast blowing them away.
A whirlwind of new
technology left the camera films that Kodak had been making for over
a century redundant and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2012.
Calpers holds $1bn
of ExxonMobil shares and Simpson says the company is facing a similar
tempest: “This is their Kodak moment. If they want to still be in
business in 30 years, they have to understand the changes that are
taking place.”
Shell, BP, Total and
Statoil are among the big oil companies that have climbed out of the
storm bunker and started listening to their shareholders’
climate-change fears. ExxonMobil remains hunkered below, shouting
“conspiracy” and refusing to let in the 21st century, let alone
Guardian reporters.
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