Rex Tillerson, Climate Bullshit And The Folly Of "Engagement" With The FF Sector
If historians someday need to explain how mankind managed to blow the fight against climate change, they need only point to last month’s shareholder meeting at Exxon Mobil headquarters in Dallas. The meeting came two days after Texas smashed old rainfall records — almost doubled them, in some cases — and as authorities were still searching for families swept away after rivers crested many feet beyond their previous records. As Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillerson — the highest-paid chief executive of the richest fossil fuel firm on the planet — gave his talk, the death toll from India’s heat wave mounted and pictures circulated on the Internet of Delhi’s pavement literally melting. Meanwhile, satellite images showed Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf on the edge of disintegration.
And how did Tillerson react? By downplaying climate change and mocking renewable energy. To be specific, he said that “inclement weather” and sea level rise “may or may not be induced by climate change,” but in any event technology could be developed to cope with any trouble. “Mankind has this enormous capacity to deal with adversity and those solutions will present themselves as those challenges become clear,” he said.
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If any good can come from Tillerson’s performance, it’s that it forever breaks the idea that “shareholder engagement” with companies such as Exxon Mobil accomplishes anything. In the past few years, as the fossil fuel divestment movement has gathered steam, some colleges, governments and religious organizations have bucked the trend toward selling off their investments in these companies and announced that they would persuade them to do the right thing instead. Many of those hoping to “engage” in this way are local and state officials.
For instance, Vermont treasurer Beth Pearce has turned down repeated calls for divestment, even as fossil fuel stocks have badly underperformed the broader market. “I prefer constructive engagement where we have a seat at the table,” she said recently. “We are making our voice heard.” Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) has taken the same tack: Divestment is “not the sharpest tool in the drawer,” he said — even after more sophisticated investors from Oxford University to the Rockefeller philanthropies announced that they had given up on engagement and were divesting. (With the Rockefellers, remember, Exxon Mobil was once the family business; if they couldn’t successfully “engage,” no one can.)
But Pearce decided to take on Exxon Mobil anyhow. She said in advance of the shareholder meeting that the company’s diversification beyond oil and gas had been “wholly inadequate.” Ouch, fighting words! Her effort to have the company set greenhouse-gas emissions targets won barely 10 percent of the vote. This kind of effort is not really designed to put pressure on Exxon Mobil. Every year the same resolutions come up and every year they are voted down — in fact, they attracted a smaller percentage of the vote this year. They’re designed instead to take pressure off officials like Pearce and Shumlin, who don’t want to offend Wall Street by divesting.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-perils-of-engagement/2015/06/05/1d3392ea-094c-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html
