Climate activists were rebuffed on numerous climate-related proposals at the annual shareholder meetings of ExxonMobil and Chevron on Wednesday. Around 20 were put forward by climate zealots. All went down in flames.
CFACT participated as a shareholder as well to ask questions and cast votes against all of them, as did its free market allies from the National Legal Policy Center and National Center for Public Policy Research. The proposals included ones to inventory greenhouse gases such as methane, include “tier 3” measurements of carbon emissions, and advance “environmental justice” in communities hit by plant closures. In virtually every case, however, these activist votes failed to muster even 18% of the shareholder vote.
A bright spot for climate realists came when CFACT’s friend and ally Steve Milloy advanced proposals in both meetings to challenge Big Oil’s embrace of alarmist science. Although these proposals were also defeated, Milloy was nevertheless given three minutes to metaphorically take off the gloves and throw punches at company CEOs for coddling up to woke activists:
“We’re constantly told that every emission warms the planet. We’re told that emissions drive warming. But the reality is that for almost nine years now, there’s been no global warming despite global emissions amounting to about 500 billion tons. Did you hear that? There’s been no warming since mid-June 2014 despite 500 billion tons of emissions! Since 2014, Industrial era atmospheric CO2 has increased by 23 percent and no warming. It would take ExxonMobil almost 900 years to emit 500 billion tons of emissions and it wouldn’t cause any warming. None of this is rocket science. None of this is so-called ‘climate denial.’ It’s straight government data that debunks the climate hoax.”
CFACT’s president, Craig Rucker, was also present at the meetings to pose questions and vote on resolutions. He spoke afterward about a change in tenor at the meetings compared to just a few years ago. Said Rucker, “It seems the Green movement has lost some of its steam in being able to push corporate boards around. I credit two things: The Ukraine war fueling high energy prices, but also the efforts of those of us in the free market think tank community putting the heat on. By encouraging state legislators to sponsor anti-ESG bills, urging state treasurers to pull monies out of leftist-managed pension funds, and showing up for meetings like these to defend traditional American values, I think all this is putting pressure on company executives to back off and stop listening to woke extremists.”
The Wall Street Journal’s assessment seemed to concur with Rucker’s viewpoint, noting in an article covering the shareholder meetings that “Wednesday’s votes demonstrated how some shareholders have backed off pushing major oil companies to embrace certain climate goals.”