ExxonMobil opposes Milloy shareholder proposal for honest climate disclosures

ExxonMobil has issued its 2021 proxy statement for its annual shareholder meeting in May. As expected, ExxonMobil has recommended that shareholders vote against Steve Milloy’s proposal for an annual report on the costs and benefits of the company’s climate activities. ExxonMobil’s response to my proposal contains several false and misleading statements.

My proposal (pp. 75-76) of the proxy statement reads as follows:

Here is ExxonMobil’s response (pp. 76-77).

Here is just some of what’s false misleading from ExxonMobil.

1. ExxonMobil is not mitigating and cannot mitigate the effects of climate change — whatever they are in the first place.

ExxonMobil states:

Regardless of your view of climate science, ExxonMobil’s emissions are irrelevant to climate. The vast majority of ExxonMobil-related emissions come from the burning of its products — about 600 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. But total manmade emissions are estimated to be about 59 billion tons, according to the United Nations. ExxonMobil could shut down and global emissions would only decline to 58.5 billion tons — and that’s only if no one else stepped into meet the lost supply. So there is nothing ExxonMobil is doing to mitigate the effects of climate change, whatever they are in the first place (also not mentioned by ExxonMobil).

2. ExxonMobil has nothing to do with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

ExxonMobil states:

The only signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement are nations. No corporations have signed the agreement. The goal of the agreement are to hold global temperatures to a 2C rise in average global temperature vs. the pre-Industrial era. There is no quantifiable relationship between ExxonMobil and the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

3. ExxonMobil misrepresents its total emissions.

ExxonMobil states:

ExxonMobil states that between 2000-2019 it has reduce its emissions by a total of 488 million tons. If those emissions cuts are true, those are merely its own operational emissions. Assuming that over that 20-year period, ExxonMobil produced a total of about 25 billion barrels of oil, the actual emissions associated with ExxonMobil and its products are on the order of 10.5 billion tons of CO2. So ExxonMobil’s claimed operation reduction of 488 million tons of CO2 are less than five percent (<5%) of the emissions of the oil it sold. Boasting about cutting operational emissions by 24 million tons per year while selling product worth 525 million tons of emissions is a special kind of dishonesty.

4. ExxonMobil misrepresents the potential of technological developments.

ExxonMobil states:

Briefly:

• ExxonMobil has spent billions on its 10-year old algae biofuels project. As spotlighted in my proposal, even ExxonMobil admits it is a decade or more away, if ever, from success.
• ExxonMobil’s current use of carbon capture technology emits more CO2 than it stores. Large scale carbon capture and sequestration is a fantasy anyway.
• There is no evidence that energy effiency technologies are worthwhile. They are so embarrassing, ExxonMobil doesn’t even bother to identify them.

ExxonMobil is not alone in making such false and misleading statements — all of which are against the law. This is why I have petitioned the SEC to stop corporate climate lying.