ExxonMobil Shareholders Confront Management Over Global Warming Inaction

WASHINGTON (May 30, 2007) – In a startling rebuke to company management, an unprecedented number of ExxonMobil shareholders today voted in favor of a resolution that calls on the company to set global warming emission targets for both its products and its operations. Thirty-one percent of those voting at the annual shareholder meeting in Dallas said it was time for the company to start addressing the business and environmental challenge. 

 

“When nearly one-third of shareholders vote to tell management to develop a program to cut emissions, this is a strong signal of discontent with the company's do-nothing posture on global warming,” said David Hawkins, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “ExxonMobil executives should be listening more carefully to their shareholders, and also paying closer attention to what their competitors are doing.”

 

For instance, ExxonMobil competitors -- including BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell -- are all members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of leading corporations and environmental organizations calling on Congress to deliver concrete global warming emissions limits (see www.us-cap.org/).

 

“The market is moving while management at ExxonMobil is standing still,” Hawkins said. “It’s time for them to take this challenge seriously.”