EXXON MOBIL

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see EXXON 2 for newer content, also tagsee exxon 3 knewexxon 4

also tillersoncapt 1/18

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</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissionsno lnxguk
Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions Chevron’s Kern River oil field in Bakersfield, California. Photograph: Guardian DesignNew data shows how fossil fuel companies have driven climate crisis despite industry knowing dangers
Half a century of dither and denial – a climate crisis timelineWhy we need political action to tackle the oil, coal and gas companies - video explainerby Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts
Wed 9 Oct 2019 07.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 10 Oct 2019 09.18 EDTThe Guardian today reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.
New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians.
The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965.
Q&AWhat is the polluters project?
Those identified range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell – to state-owned companies including Saudi Aramco and Gazprom.
Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>

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...So why, then, does the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the nation's most storied civil rights groups, organizer of the Freedom Rides and the 1963 March on Washington, attack those who want to curb global warming? ExxonMobil, which in 2003 gave CORE $40,000 ($15,000 was earmarked for "global climate outreach"),

would obviously like to avoid any appearance that its products and policies are a slow-moving assault on poor people of color. How better than to turn the accusation around? In that bit of public relations jujitsu, CORE has been most useful. To those familiar with CORE's recent history, its allegiance to ExxonMobil comes as no surprise. In 1968, Roy Innis seized control of CORE and moved the group to the far right. Innis has been accused by founder James Farmer and other black leaders of renting out CORE's historic reputation to corporations like Monsanto and ExxonMobil. (CORE even mounted a counterprotest to environmentalists picketing an ExxonMobil shareholders' meeting.) [...]

Helping CORE form these talking points is its senior policy adviser, Paul Driessen, the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death, who also works with several other ExxonMobil-funded groups. At a 2004 ExxonMobil shareholders' meeting, Driessen referred to CORE as "one of America's oldest and most respected civil rights organizations" and called for greater funding for the group.

Exxon's Gamble: 25 Years of Rejecting Shareholder Concerns on Climate Change

For 25 years, stockholders have asked Exxon to confront the threat of climate change in all sorts of ways: by investing in renewable energy, cutting harmful emissions, providing carbon risk assessments and adding a board member with climate expertise. Year after year, the oil giant has said no.

Exxon's 25 Years of 'No': Timeline of Resolutions on Climate Change

InsideClimate News compiled a chronology and detailed spreadsheet that examines Exxon's refusal to support dozens of shareholder resolutions on climate change since 1990.

6/15

history: http://www.desmog.uk/2015/04/16/how-exxonmobil-reacted-when-environmentalists-crashed-its-first-annual-meeting-18-years-ago

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corp profits bigger share of gnp since 29

since merger exxon spent most on direct lobbty after GE and PG&E 625

after downgrade S&P said exxon one of 4  US co to have AAA  coll

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<div class="byline environment"><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">DeSmogBlog</a> [1] / By <a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/sharon-kelly" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Sharon Kelly</a> [2]</div>

<h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title">Responding to Investor Pressure, ExxonMobil Agrees to Disclose Fracking Risks</h1>

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<div class="story-date">April 7, 2014  |  </div>

ExxonMobil, the nation's largest oil and gas company, will begin disclosing risks associated with shale drilling and fracking to investors, in response to a long-running campaign by a coalition of shareholders.

In February, the groups of investors in a handful of major oil and gas companies including Exxon, Chevron and EOG Resources, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/02/04/risks-fracking-boom-draw-renewed-attention-investors" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">demanded</a> [3]for the fifth year in a row more information from companies about the risks associated with fracking. The motion won the support of over 30 percent of Exxon shareholders — an unusually strong showing for a shareholder resolution.

On Thursday, the investors’ coalition announced that Exxon was the first company to agree to disclose risks. The company will publish a report by September that will describe fracking’s potential harm to air quality, water and roads, as well as risks associated with the chemicals used. Exxon agreed to follow criteria identified in a 2013 report, cited by the coalition and called <a href="http://disclosingthefacts.org/" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Disclosing the Facts: Transparency and Risk in Hydraulic Fracturing Operations</a> [4], in which Exxon received a failing grade for its transparency.

“We have seen the significant risks that come from hydraulic fracturing activities,” said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, custodian and investment advisor for the New York City Pension Funds’ $144 billion in assets, including $1.02 billion in ExxonMobil stock. “Corporate transparency in this arena is truly necessary for assessing risk and ensuring that all stakeholders have the information they need to make informed decisions.”

However, Exxon’s first report will not disclose data on methane leaks – information that shareholders argued strongly should be made public. Natural gas is primarily made of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has climate changing effects over <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">80 times more powerful</a> [5] than carbon dioxide during the first two decades after it escapes to the Earth’s atmosphere.

Some environmentalists question whether Exxon's report will represent much of a step forward. Bloomberg <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-03/exxon-bows-to-investor-demands-to-disclose-fracking-risks.html" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">reported</a> [6] that much of the company’s disclosures “will be comprised of data and analyses Exxon has published in publicly available filings or the corporate website,” citing an interview with Exxon spokesperson Alan Jeffers.

Shareholder groups say they will vigorously monitor the quality of Exxon’s report. “It does feel like Exxon is changing the way it's doing business,” Danielle Fugere, president of shareholder coalition member As You Sow, <a href="http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-499596/" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">told the Wall Street Journal</a> [7], adding that if Exxon’s disclosures are incomplete, “we did reserve our right to bring a resolution next year.”

Researchers have long criticized the quality of the data the oil and gas industry voluntarily makes public. After intense pressure from Congress, environmentalist and the media, the oil and gas industry published a website called FracFocus that provides information on chemicals used by the industry and ostensibly represented a step towards transparency. But a Harvard Law School <a href="http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059979931" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">assessment</a> [8] last year of the website concluded that the site has “serious flaws,” is not vetted, and should not be relied upon by the government or the public.

Still, Thursday’s move represents a major shift in Exxon’s approach to talking about risks. In 2011, in response to investor complaints that the company failed to supply sufficient information about fracking risks, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson flatly responded “You’re just wrong.”

Mr. Tillerson, it should be noted, has first-hand experience with the risks associated with the shale gas boom. In Februrary, he <a href="http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/02/wsj_exxon_ceo_lawsuit_fracking.php" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">made headlines</a> [9] for joining a lawsuit opposing the unsightly expansion of his own industry’s infrastructure into his wealthy Bartonville, TX neighborhood, citing the “noise nuisance and traffic hazards” as a possible threat to property values.

Energy industry consultants have long warned the drilling industry against a strategy that downplays the hazards of oil and gas extraction. For years, the industry <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04natgas.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" target="blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">contended</a> [10] that there were no documented cases where fracking contaminated groundwater, despite <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/us/04natgas.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" target="blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">significant proof</a> [10] to the contrary.

“The public is skeptical of anything we say,” Tisha Conoly-Schuller, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association <a href="http://www.naturalgaswatch.org/?p=939" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">warned</a> [11]executives gathered at a shale industry conference in Colorado in 2011. Indeed, 49% of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center opposed fracking in September 2013, a sharp spike from the 38% opposed in March of that year.

Exxon is also changing its tone on the broader risks associated with climate change. This week, Exxon also <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26830555" target="blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">released a report</a> [12] delving into the potential concerns that climate change poses for the company’s investors and how the company plans to manage those risks. <a href="http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/environment/climate-change/managing-climate-change-risks/carbon-asset-risk" target="blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">That report</a> [13], issued on Monday, was also the result of shareholder activism by As You Sow.

The jury is out on whether Exxon's recently announced report is a publicity stunt or an actual reckoning with the need for public disclosure of risks.

“We understand people have concerns. This activity (fracking) is somewhat new and not understood in some parts of the country,” Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers <a href="http://http//www.businessinsider.com/r-exxon-mobil-agrees-to-share-more-data-on-fracking-risks-2014-03" target="_blank" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">told Reuters</a> [14]. “People want more information and the more they know, the better.”

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<div class="tags">See more stories tagged with:

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/fracking-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">fracking</a> [15],</div>

<div class="field-item odd"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/hydrofracking" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">hydrofracking</a> [16],</div>

<div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/exxon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">exxon</a> [17]</div>

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<div class="print-source_url" style="">Source URL: <a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/responding-investor-pressure-exxonmobil-agrees-disclose-fracking-risks" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">http://www.alternet.org/environment/responding-investor-pressure-exxonmobil-agrees-disclose-fracking-risks</a></div>

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<h2 style="margin: 15px 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;">LIGHTING THE WAY</h2>

While those groups work from the bottom up to help push Washington to move on climate issues, a constellation of prominent conservative economists is bolstering the cause. These conservatives include such intellectuals as Art Laffer, the former senior adviser to President Reagan; George Shultz, Reagan’s secretary of State; Gregory Mankiw, who was an economic adviser to the Romney campaign and the former chief economist for George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers; Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the president of the influential conservative think tank American Action Forum, a former head of Bush’s Council on Economic Advisers, and an economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign; and a host of other well-respected conservative economic thinkers.

Laffer spoke to National Journal by phone from his home in Tennessee, where he lives next door to Gore. The Reagan economist and the liberal global-warming crusader disagree on many issues but are united on the wisdom of a carbon-tax swap as good environmental and economic policy. “Al is a dear friend, and I think he’s a damned good public servant,” Laffer says. “I am ignorant-squared on climate change, but what I do believe is that the risks of reducing carbon in the environment are less than the risks of putting more carbon into the environment.”

Last year, Laffer wrote a detailed paper on how best to structure a carbon-tax swap, presumably as part of the broader tax-reform effort Congress appears to be moving toward. “What I believe in, and Al Gore believes in, is if you’re going to do a carbon tax, you need to offset it dollar-for-dollar with marginal tax reduction on income or employment,” he says. “Anyone who goes through what I just went through, they’ll agree with me. I’ve had more experience than anyone in the financial thinking on this.”

At the beginning of this Congress, a group of Republican lawmakers, along with a few coal-state Democrats, sponsored a measure that vowed they would never back a carbon tax, and given the antitax mood in Washington, prospects for such a tax appear dim. Still, both opponents and proponents concede that the idea will certainly be on the table if Congress makes a serious attempt at tax reform in the coming years.

Laffer said that as with so many of the policies he’s proposed before, the time will ripen for a carbon tax as it moves from impossible to inevitable. “My policies are always the North Star,” he says. “Right now, this is viewed as a third-order problem. But if we take over in 2016, this will have huge traction.”

Laffer spent last year promoting the idea on college campuses. The climate-change advocacy group Clean Air-Cool Planet flew Holtz-Eakin to New Hampshire to participate in living-room chats with voters about the economic costs of climate change and the economic benefits of addressing the problem.

In March, Schultz went to Capitol Hill to talk about climate change and push the carbon tax to congressional aides. In a standing-room-only gathering in the Rayburn House Office Building, he argued, “Good work on conservation and the environment is in the Republican genes; we’ve been the guys who did it.… My proposal is to have a revenue-neutral carbon tax.” Schultz got a standing ovation. Among the audience were staffers from the offices of Republican Reps. Phil Roe of Tennessee, Billy Long of Missouri, and Randy Neugebauer of Texas—ranked as the most conservative member of the House in a 2011 NJ survey.

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<h2 style="font-weight: bold; margin: 15px 0px -10px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal;">A SLEEPING GIANT</h2>

It’s long been taken as a truism that the powerful oil lobby is the reason nothing happens on climate change in Washington. For many years, that was indeed true. In particular, Exxon Mobil, the nation’s largest oil company and a major contributor to Republican candidates, was associated with a campaign to fuel skepticism about climate science. From 1998 to 2006, Exxon Mobil contributed more than $600,000 to the Heartland Institute, a well-known nonprofit group that holds conferences and publishes books aimed at debunking the science of climate change. Exxon Mobil’s support of Heartland made sense. The oil company stood to take a financial hit from “cap-and-trade” climate-change proposals that would have priced carbon pollution from oil.

For a number of reasons, that equation is changing. Exxon Mobil has ended its support of Heartland’s agenda. It’s not that the oil giant has had a green awakening; it’s just that a series of internal changes have positioned the company to profit from at least some policies that price carbon emissions.

In 2010, Exxon Mobil bought the natural-gas company XTO Energy, which transformed the venerable oil producer into the world’s largest natural-gas producer. Around the same time, the company began making a noticeable shift in its climate policy. The reason: Natural gas, which is used to generate electricity, is the lowest-polluting fossil fuel, emitting just half of the greenhouse gases as coal, the world’s top electricity source. In the event of a tax on carbon pollution, demand for coal-fired electricity would freeze, while markets for natural gas would explode.

Every year, Exxon Mobil puts out a widely read report with projections on the global state of energy development. The most recent one included the assumption of a future price on carbon and a corresponding surge in natural-gas consumption. “We assume there’s going to be a price on carbon in the future, and that assumption drives our investment strategy,” says company spokesman Alan Jeffers.

And the position on climate change at Exxon Mobil that once helped fund the Heartland conferences? “We have the same concerns about climate change as everyone. The risk of climate change exists; it’s caused by more carbon in the atmosphere; the risk is growing; and there’s broad scientific and policy consensus on this,” Jeffers says.

In 2010, during Senate negotiations on the cap-and-trade bill, Exxon Mobil told the White House that it wouldn’t back that bill, but it would support legislation with a straight carbon tax, ideally, a carbon-tax swap along the lines of what Inglis and Laffer propose. Ultimately, of course, all of those attempts failed. And, today, Exxon Mobil is not actively lobbying for the tax. The company’s position remains the same, though, Jeffers says. “Our approach has been, if public policymakers have decided they want to put a price on carbon, we see a revenue-neutral carbon tax as the most efficient way to do that.”

In the 2012 campaign, Exxon Mobil gave $2.7 million in political contributions, with 88 percent going to Republicans. One of the world’s biggest and most profitable oil companies—a lobbying powerhouse and major influence in GOP politics, particularly in deep-red oil states—has accepted the science of climate change and figured out how to profit from a carbon-price policy. While Exxon Mobil won’t be leading the green revolution, its shift could make a difference in the way many Republicans approach the issue.

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XTO's parent company <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ExxonMobil" title="ExxonMobil" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">ExxonMobil</a> is a longtime member of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" title="American Legislative Exchange Council" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC). Randy Smith, Exxon Mobil Government Affairs Manager, represents Exxon Mobil on ALEC's corporate ("<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Boards_and_Task_Forces#.22Private_Enterprise.22_Board_of_Directors" title="ALEC Boards and Task Forces" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Private Enterprise</a>") board as of 2011.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=XTO_Energy#cite_note-11" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[12]</a> (Smith also sits on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Marcellus_Shale" title="Marcellus Shale" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">Marcellus Shale</a> Advisory Commission that considers the impact of oil drilling through "fracking." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=XTO_Energy#cite_note-12" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[13]</a>) According to Exxon’s 2011 corporate giving report, ALEC was listed as the recipient of $86,500, including over $12,000 for an “ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit,” which included discussion of fracking legislation.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=XTO_Energy#cite_note-13" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[14]</a>

State legislation on fracking chemical disclosure that allows exclusions for "proprietary trade secrets"<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=XTO_Energy#cite_note-14" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[15]</a> -- creating legal loopholes for keeping some chemicals unknown -- has been linked to model legislation put forth by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ExxonMobil" title="ExxonMobil" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">ExxonMobil</a> through <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC" title="ALEC" class="mw-redirect" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none;">ALEC</a>.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=XTO_Energy#cite_note-15" style=" text-decoration: none; color: rgb(11, 0, 128); background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[16]</a>

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<h2>Exxon's Unfriendly Skies: Why Does Exxon Control the No-Fly Zone Over Arkansas Tar Sands Spill?</h2>

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) <a target="blank" href="http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_8699.html">has had a "no fly zone" in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM</a> and will be in place "<a target="blank" href="http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_8699.html">until further notice</a>," according to the FAA website and it's <a target="_blank" href="http://m.arkansasonline.com/news/2013/apr/03/no-fly-zone-place-over-mayflower-oil-spill/?latest">being overseen by ExxonMobil itself</a>. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon's permission.

Mayflower is the site of the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/01/everything-you-need-know-about-exxon-pegasus-tar-sands-spill" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill</a>, which belched out an estimated <a target="blank" href="http://www.4-traders.com/EXXON-MOBIL-CORPORATION-4822/news/Exxon-Mobil-Corporation-No-Fly-Zone-in-Place-Over-Arkansas-Pipeline-Spill-Site-16604318/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">5,000 barrels</a> of tar sands <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/dilbit-disaster-insideclimate-news-incredible-depth-report-enbridge-s-kalamazoo-oil-spill" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">diluted bitumen ("dilbit")</a> into the small town's neighborhoods, causing the <a target="blank" href="http://www.thv11.com/news/article/258234/2/No-Fly-Zone-issued-for-Mayflower-region">evacuation of 22 homes</a>.

The rules of engagement for the no fly zone dictate that <a target="blank" href="http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_3_8699.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">no aircraft can fly within 1,000 feet of the ground in the five-mile radius</a> surrounding the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/01/everything-you-need-know-about-exxon-pegasus-tar-sands-spill" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill</a>. The area located within this radius includes the nearby <a target="blank" href="http://skyvector.com/airport/AR34/Pine-Village-Airport">Pine Village Airport</a>.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed that the FAA site noted earlier today that "only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff" were allowed within the designated no fly zone.

Suhrhoff is not an FAA employee: <a target="blank" href="http://www.webcitation.org/6Fc6Zyhfb">he works for ExxonMobil as an "</a><a target="blank" href="http://www.webcitation.org/6Fc6Zyhfb">Aviation Advisor</a><a target="_blank" href="http://www.webcitation.org/6Fc6Zyhfb">"</a> and formerly worked as a U.S. Army pilot for 24 years, according to his LinkedIn page.

Lynn Lunsford, an FAA spokesman, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.4-traders.com/EXXON-MOBIL-CORPORATION-4822/news/Exxon-Mobil-Corporation-No-Fly-Zone-in-Place-Over-Arkansas-Pipeline-Spill-Site-16604318/">told Dow Jones a no fly zone was issued because</a> "at least one" helicopter was needed to move clean-up crews around, as well as to spot oil that can't be seen from the ground.

"The pilot of the helicopter needs to be able to move about freely without potential conflicts with other aircraft," <a target="_blank" href="http://www.4-traders.com/EXXON-MOBIL-CORPORATION-4822/news/Exxon-Mobil-Corporation-No-Fly-Zone-in-Place-Over-Arkansas-Pipeline-Spill-Site-16604318/">he told Dow Jones</a>.

This also means press is prohibited from the area, though Lunsford told Dow Jones that the FAA "is in the process of amending the restriction to allow news media aircraft into the area."

When will news media be allowed back into the designated no fly zone area? That portion of the question was either never asked by Dow Jones or never answered by Lunsford.

This comes one day after Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said his office would be <a target="blank" href="http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/347065">opening an investigation into the incident</a>. It also comes one day after <a target="blank" href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/03/no-fly-zone-in-place-over-arkansas-pipeline-spill-site/">federal pipeline regulators barred ExxonMobil from restarting the pipeline</a> until it receives close inspection.

It appears the Pegasus spill is becoming<a target="blank" href="http://www.motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/03/BP-oil-tarballs-louisiana"> the BP Gulf oil disaster</a> take two, with the <a target="blank" href="http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/oil-spill-bp-grand-isle-beach">responsible polluter running every step of the show</a>.

InsideClimate News reporter <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/author/lisa-song" target="_blank">Lisa Song</a> was threatened with arrest on Wednesday after she entered the command center for the cleanup operation in Mayflower, Ark., where a major oil pipeline spill occurred on Friday.

Song went to the command center in hopes of reaching representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. She had been told they were working out of the command center, but had been unable to get their names or contact information despite multiple requests to the agencies.

Thousands of barrels of <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130330/exxon-confirms-ruptured-pipeline-ark-carried-canadian-dilbit" target="blank">oil from Alberta's tar sands region</a>—similar to the diluted bitumen that would flow through the controversial Keystone XL project—spilled into a residential neighborhood from a pipeline owned by ExxonMobil, forcing the evacuation of 22 homes. <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130404/exxon-oil-spill-leaves-arkansas-neighborhood-shock" target="blank">Those families are now being housed in hotels</a> at Exxon's expense.

Song had tried to enter the command compound on Tuesday, but was turned away by a security guard. On Wednesday, however, a different guard was on duty and he waved her through the gate. Inside, a second person directed her to the warehouse that houses the command center.

Inside the building, Song went to a table with a sign that said "public affairs," where she was given the name and contact information for Austin Vela, the EPA spokesman at the site. Before she could get the name of a DOT representative, however, Exxon spokeswoman Kim Jordan spotted Song and told her to leave. A second person arrived and said, "You've been asked by security to leave. If you don't you'll be arrested for criminal trespass."

...http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130405/insideclimate-news-reporter-threatened-arrest-ark-oil-spill-site

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<h1>Exxon Facing Shareholder Revolt</h1>

<a class="nolink">Posted by </a><a href="http://www.developmentcrossing.com/profile/BradEwing">Brad Ewing</a><a class="nolink"> on May 20, 2008 at 1:02am</a></div>

An interesting article in the Guardian this week discusses the current shareholder "revolt" at Exxon over its approach to climate change. <a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/may/19/exxonmobil.oil">The article, by Andrew Clark</a>, is found below:

"A shareholder revolt at ExxonMobil led by the billionaire Rockefeller family has won the support of four significant British institutional investors who will call on Monday for a shakeup in the governance of the world's biggest oil company.

Guardian.co.uk has learned that F&C Asset Management, Morley Fund Management, the Co-Operative Insurance Society and the West Midlands Pension Fund are throwing their weight behind a resolution demanding that ExxonMobil appoints an independent chairman to stimulate debate on the company's board.

Exxon is facing a rebellion from its investors over its hardline approach to global warming. The firm has refused to follow rival oil companies in committing large-scale capital investment to environmentally friendly technology such as wind and solar power.

The Rockefeller dynasty, whose ancestor John D Rockefeller founded the original oil business at the core of ExxonMobil, have sponsored four shareholder resolutions demanding changes at Exxon. One of these calls on Exxon's chief executive Rex Tillerson, to relinquish his role as chairman in favour of an outsider to bring in an alternative point of view.

<a href="http://www.developmentcrossing.com/profiles/blogs/1018705:BlogPost:14875">http://www.developmentcrossing.com/profiles/blogs/1018705:BlogPost:14875</a>

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<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://insideclimatenews.cmail5.com/t/t-l-akyilt-hdtyujtt-g/" style=" color: #444444; text-decoration: none;">Exxon Damage Assessment: If Not the Feds, Then Who?</a>

For now, two state agencies will little experience in dealing with major oil spills are in charge of surveying and counteracting the ecological damage.

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://insideclimatenews.cmail5.com/t/t-l-akyilt-hdtyujtt-w/" style=" color: #216b12; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">Read the story.</a>

</div>

Does InsideClimate News’ win signal a fresh approach to environmental journalism? Perhaps, although depending on grants and gifts can be a perilous business that is hard to sustain in a long haul.

In honor of their win, we look at some of the surprising stories InsideClimate News has uncovered recently.

<a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120626/dilbit-diluted-bitumen-enbridge-kalamazoo-river-marshall-michigan-oil-spill-6b-pipeline-epa">1. The Dilbit Disaster</a>

The story that won the Pulitzer, the team took a hard look at the 2010 oil spill in Michigan, as well as the larger issue of the safety of dilbit.

<a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130405/insideclimate-news-reporter-threatened-arrest-ark-oil-spill-site">2. Exxon Allegedly Threatens an InsideClimate Reporter With Arrest</a>

Hazards on the trail of a hot environmental story, in this case the recent oil spill in Arkansas.

<a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130219/oil-sands-mining-tar-sands-alberta-canada-energy-return-on-investment-eroi-natural-gas-in-situ-dilbit-bitumen">3. Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces</a>

“Thanks to high global oil prices, industry can afford the large amount of energy needed to extract the oil and turn it into a usable fuel,” wrote Rachel Nuwer.

4. <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121220/clean-energy-economy-2012-year-end-solyndra-wind-energy-solar-power-feed-in-tariff-germany-low-carbon-california">2012 Was a Big Year for America’s Clean Energy Economy, Despite Solyndra</a>

Good news for those frustrated by the partisan attacks.

5. <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20121115/germany-energiewende-nuclear-energy-fukushima-chernobyl-merkel-renewables">So Far So Good for Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out, Despite Dire Predictions</a>

Part of a series of detailed reports from Europe.

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frontline:

In some ways, it’s kind of a no-brainer that Exxon would go after climate science on a very superficial level. It’s sort of in their self-interest to keep government away from fossil fuels, right? Is that how it began?

Well, there were a lot of corporations, including oil companies, that objected to the Kyoto accords in 1997. But most of them lobbied against the treaty on economic and fairness grounds that would cost the economy of the United States too much for the benefits promised, and also that it wasn’t fair that developing societies would be left out of the bargain.

But Exxon did something that I think was fairly radical, which was that they chose to go after the science. And I think that was more the results of the personal conviction of the chief executive, Lee Raymond, than it really was an expression of their rational business needs.

After all, ExxonMobil was an oil and gas company. Gas was not problematic under climate change regulation. Oil was not as problematic as coal. They were an enormous corporation with rich profits. They could have survived Kyoto. They could have survived a price cap on carbon. They could survive on that. But they chose not only to oppose the treaty, but to attack the science.

So they could have in a sense written a check for what Kyoto called for, and instead not only went after the treaty but every scientific basis or even thinking about climate change as a threat to the world.

Lee Raymond — who had a doctoral degree in chemical engineering and who had a personal conviction that he understood the science well enough to reach a judgment about it — decided that the science was wrong.

He believed that it was a hoax, in effect, that the earth was not warming at all. … So he not only went after the treaty bargain, but funded, often in the early years surreptitiously, campaigns to attack the science that were carried out by nonscientific groups, often by free-market ideologues, … this out of an organization, ExxonMobil, that is in fact quite dependent on scientists and science. In time, perhaps we will understand what the internal reaction among scientists within ExxonMobil was to this campaigning, because there’s some evidence that within ExxonMobil, there was study going on about how global warming could affect oil discovery, for example.

So on the one hand, the chief executive was saying there is no global warming, and on the other hand, scientific departments of ExxonMobil were looking into how, if there was global warming, ExxonMobil could profit from it. …

What sort of tools were at the disposal of Exxon to really go after the science? After all, isn’t science science?

Well, money to fund campaigns raising doubts. I mean, science is science, but science is based on doubts. Science is based on arguments. Science is based on honest dissent. There is hardly a branch of science where you can’t identify a single scientist who doesn’t have an opposing view. In fact, scientists are trained to question and doubt. [perversion)

In the case of climate science in the late 1990s, the consensus was still forming around how confident scientists could be about the cause, the contribution of human industrial activity to warming, what the risks over what period of time would actually turn out to be.

Here in 2012, we have a much clearer sense of what the modeling warns us about than was available in 1997. And so ExxonMobil was able to exploit genuine divisions that were still present in a global scientific community.

Those divisions were narrowing; they were closing. They would vanish within five to seven years. But ExxonMobil drove a wedge into that debate, exploited the dissent that is an aid to science and used this to create doubts in the public mind about whether the science was legitimate.

<div class="pullquote_right">“ExxonMobil drove a wedge into that debate, exploited the dissent that is an aid to science and used this to create doubts in the public mind about whether the science was legitimate.”</div>

After all, this is a kind of science that is very difficult for any ordinary American to evaluate on his or her [own], and we all know that weather is uncertain. We all watch the weather forecast every night and watch the weathermen who are presumably trained meteorologists and [who] get it wrong over and over and over again.

So here comes a campaign suggesting that this very consequential weather forecast might turn out to be wrong. Well, there’s an intuitive way in which Americans are going to take that up, especially if it’s propounded in a clever way that emphasizes what’s uncertain and what’s unknown. …

And the moment they concede that uncertainty, who’s poised to take advantage of that?

Well, ExxonMobil and the rest of the fossil fuel industry can rightfully say, “Scientists themselves are uncertain about exactly how warming will unfold.” And then you can go further, as Lee Raymond did. …

Lee Raymond, the chief executive of ExxonMobil, said at a shareholders’ meeting around 2000, “I’m not convinced that the earth is warming at all.” In fact, he said publicly that he feared that an ice age was more likely than an age of catastrophic warming.

And called it a hoax?

I’m not sure that he used the word “hoax,” but he in effect said, “I don’t believe there is convincing evidence that the earth’s temperature is going up in a meaningful trend.” At that point, by the late 1990s, there was really no doubt in the scientific community that the earth was warming.

The only remaining controversy at that time in the late 1990s was how confident scientists could be that industrial activity was an important or the most important forcing mechanism in the warming that everyone agreed was occurring. But Lee Raymond didn’t even concede that the warming was occurring. …

Describe this sort of freedom-fighter group that Exxon funded that would basically take on not only the science, but also the politics of what climate science was driving.

The most radical of these groups were free-market advocates, some of them medium-sized by Washington standards, some of them quite small and almost purpose-built to campaign against climate science.

They were often led by non-scientists, economists or public policy advocates. And they were specialists in communicating to members of Congress, to opinion makers, to Republican activists and to the public about matters of public policy.

So they essentially developed a campaign, a kind of multiphase, self-conscious communications campaign to try to put across the arguments that they felt most strongly about. This included tax on the Kyoto accords treaty on economic-unfairness grounds. But they also included campaigning against the science itself.

And how much money are we talking about? What kind of resources did Exxon and others bring to the table?

Well, multimillions of dollars were spent on this. And the records suggest that much of the oil industry’s contribution to this funding was routed through the American Petroleum Institute, which is where the oil companies individually often do the lobbying that’s most likely to be controversial, because then they have the shield of an industrywide group.

Within API, ExxonMobil is by far the biggest player. Dues and in effect voting power are allocated on the basis of corporate size. And so Exxon, as the largest corporation, was the big fish. And also Lee Raymond, the chairman and chief executive, was the one who really drove this agenda. We have minutes and records of the American Petroleum Institute from this period that made clear that Exxon really took over this campaign and drove the funding and the strategy in the years after Kyoto.

In addition, there were other participants from the coal industry and from other ideological and industry groups that supported this work. But the oil industry-led work involved spending millions of dollars per year over a number of years following the enactment of the Kyoto accords, in particular in 1997.

… Did Exxon rely on scientists to make their argument in anything?

Sure. They, like the campaigners, built petitions of various kinds of scientists who agreed with this critique. Now, there was a particular petition that was circulated at this time that turned out to be highly flawed and contained the names of pop singers and other phony signatures that really didn’t have any scientific background.

But there were a handful of credited scientists at mainstream universities and other organizations, some of them qualified in the relevant fields, who expressed doubts about the conventional wisdom at that time in global warming and climate science.

And although they were a very small minority of the total number of scientists working in this area, they were prepared to be forceful in their dissent. And science, of course, has often thrived on the lonely dissenter. So ExxonMobil rallied to these individuals who were, in its mind, bravely defying the United Nations and the conventional wisdom of the liberal environmental elites and called attention and provided funding to these dissidents, and then used their messages, their scientific credentials and their arguments to campaign before the public to raise questions about the credibility of what was becoming more and more a consensus science.

Aside from this handful of dissenters, though, was the argument driven by ExxonMobil made mostly by nonscientists?

A lot of these groups were run by economists, litigators, lawyers and public policy specialists, people who specialized in getting a message out, not people who were scientists. This was a Washington campaign. This was about influencing the media. This was about creating a false controversy really in proportion to the dissent versus the majority.

The effect of the campaign was to persuade many people in the media that this was an even-sided debate; that there were people who thought global warming was going on and an equal number roughly who thought it wasn’t, and that, therefore, by the conventions of impartial journalism, every story that covered legislation or other controversies around global warming should equally quote from both sides of the debate. That was a goal, an explicit goal that was written down as part of this campaign.

Let’s create doubt; let’s create a sense of a balanced debate and make sure that these lines of skepticism and dissent become routinely a part of public discussion about climate science. And, in fact, they succeeded at that.

This group may not have been scientists, but they were really good at this sort of thing.

Well, some of them actually came out of campaigning on behalf of the tobacco industry in the 1960s, which was a campaign that over a period of 10 or 15 years managed to prolong the period in which the American public believed that there might not be much danger in smoking.

Even though the tobacco companies internally knew as long ago as the 1950s that smoking was quite dangerous to human health, it really wasn’t until the 1970s or later that the evidence that this was no longer a debatable subject became part of a political consensus in the United States.

And that delay period before lawsuits and other factors caused the tobacco industry to be held accountable for the misinformation that it had communicated to the smoking public, that was the product of a similar communications campaign. …

So replace human body with climate and carcinogen with carbon, and you pretty much have the tobacco industry debate upgraded for climate science in the 21st century?

These are complex systems. How can we be certain what factors are going on? Even observing change over time is a very complicated endeavor. And listen to the scientists themselves; they’ll tell you they don’t know the answer to every question.

Since there’s so much uncertainty, therefore, we should be very cautious about undertaking costly restrictions or regulations inhibiting human freedom and all of the rest of the arguments that go along with that. Yes, there is a similarity.

When did this success in terms of messaging become a PR problem on some level for Exxon?

Well, environmental groups, scientists and later members of Congress became aware of this campaigning, because it was right out in the open. And some of the groups that were carrying it out looked by their nature to be underqualified to be entering into a politically important debate about science and public policy.

So investigations began. Greenpeace conducted some of them; Union of Concerned Scientists conducted some of them. Other important environmental groups in Washington started looking underneath the hood. …

And gradually, these mostly nonprofit groups and some journalists were able to describe by 2003, 2004, pretty thoroughly before the public, that these groups were certainly well funded by the oil industry, if not in some respect an instrument of oil industry lobbying.

Of course, these groups all said: “Hey, we believe this on our own. We are independent libertarians or free-market groups. We will have these convictions whether ExxonMobil was providing us with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we are not.”

Maybe that’s so. But in any event, they were amplified in their messaging by the amount of resources they could tap from industry during this time.

At ExxonMobil shareholder meetings, some of these activists and dissenters started turning up to protest ExxonMobil’s funding of such groups. And initially, there was just a kind of public argument with Lee Raymond defiantly on the stage putting up his slides of scientists that agreed with him and telling shareholders: “I don’t even think the earth is warning at all. You people are wrong.”

But the more these investigations went on, the more the dissent about ExxonMobil’s fairly radical decision to attack the science began to attract really mainstream dissenters among the shareholder community as well as the environmental community. And now the people turning up at ExxonMobil shareholder meetings were a little bit less predictable.

The Rockefeller family split in half. And members of the Rockefeller family — from which ExxonMobil is descended from the Rockefeller Standard Oil Trust — they turned up at the shareholder meetings to say: “We think you are tarnishing the legacy of our great-great-great-grandfather. We think a respectable American corporation of your size, the largest corporation owned by shareholders headquartered in the United States, ought to act a little more responsively about matters of public science and public safety.” …

So that kind of dissent started to attract attention. And I think it bothered the board of ExxonMobil as the years went on. I think it bothered senior management.

I think they felt that they had been a little bit exposed by Lee Raymond’s personal convictions about this beyond where their business interests lay, because really, if the Congress in the United States in 2004 had imposed a $20-a-ton price on carbon-based fuels as one response to mitigate global warming, … that price, if it had been enacted, would have affected ExxonMobil’s business prospects hardly at all. They were a very profitable, durable oil and gas company. The price on carbon would have advantaged natural gas over coal, just as it would now. Half of ExxonMobil’s oil and gas holdings around the world are natural gas, so in a sense they could even have been winners.

Yes, it would have been a little more expensive for them to sell oil and operate some of their refineries in the United States. But none of that would have damaged ExxonMobil’s business in some existential way, … which made their actions attacking the science, in my judgment, all the more radical.

… What was their perception of the liability at the end of the day?

Well, there are different kinds of liability that I think they feared. I think the most severe liability that they feared — although it never has materialized — was comparable to the liability that ultimately bankrupted many tobacco companies, which was, there was a movement in the environmental industry to litigate against ExxonMobil for funding this campaign against climate science.

The idea was that they might be held liable for essentially undermining the available information to the public and the Congress.

Perpetuating an idea that was, number one, false, and number two, undermined public health?

That’s right. And there was a movement to try to identify victims of global warming who might try to hold ExxonMobil accountable. And of course, if such litigation were permitted to go forward, then lawyers for these victims, whoever they might be — residents of an island that was destined to come underwater if the sea levels rose, for example — they would be able to access internal records of ExxonMobil, much as happened in the tobacco industry. And perhaps that would reveal that ExxonMobil, for example, had internal scientists telling them all along global warming is real even while the corporation was campaigning against the science.

So they were very concerned about those kinds of big-ticket liability lawsuits, the kind that went after the asbestos industry, the kind that went after the tobacco industry, because when those kinds of lawsuits succeed, then an industry and a corporation can be in real peril. …

ExxonMobil’s most profitable business is at the wellhead, where they discover oil, pump it out of the ground, sell it wholesale to some user inside the corporate family or outside. That kind of activity, offshore, Nigeria, in Russia, all around the world, [was] not likely to be so affected by American greenhouse gas regulation.

Where they had some expenses that they would have to [incur] was mostly in the refinery operations, these giant factorylike plants where crude oil is converted into gasoline or precursors for the chemical industry or aviation fuel or other products.

Now, those are polluting, hot-running, very complicated industry plants that would be subject to these either prices in a cap-and-trade system or regulation if the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] declared them to be polluters.

But in truth, ExxonMobil’s profits, circa $40 billion these days, are durable against any such regulation or carbon pricing. First of all, these refining operations represent a small percentage of their profit making. In fact, they are the most difficult aspect of their business, the least profitable.

Secondly, they are, by and large, wholesalers. So even if they have to incur incremental costs in order to comply with these regulations, they’ll be able to pass those prices down to the ultimate consumer. It’s not clear that the rates of profitability are jeopardized at all.

So in a business sense, not only was it to some extent irrational to act so radically on the subject of climate science, but, you know, also as Lee Raymond’s successor, as Chief Executive Rex Tillerson later acknowledged, it actually hurt ExxonMobil, because what they want is price stability. They want a world that is consistent across 20 or 30 or 40 years, because their whole business model is based on very expensive long-term investments. What messes up their business model is volatility, things that are unexpected. And one of the sources of volatility in the future is, they don’t know how climate is going to be regulated.

So there were many other oil companies that thought it would be smarter to get ahead of this problem, create support for a stable system, even if it was a little more expensive for them, that would at least create a degree of certainty over 20 or 30 years about what kind of environment they were operating in. But ExxonMobil went a different way.

So at what point did they get out?

At the end of 2005, Lee Raymond retired, and he was succeeded by a man named Rex Tillerson, who continues to run ExxonMobil today as chairman and chief executive. Now, Tillerson has acknowledged that when he came in he wanted to change ExxonMobil’s communications strategy around climate and other controversial issues. He has acknowledged that he thought the company had a problem.

Now, when he started to change, he did two things. First, they reviewed some of these free-market groups that they had been funding, and they cut funding to the most radical among them, especially the smaller, sort of purpose-built groups that were just concentrating on attacking climate science. And then they tried to recalibrate, reposition ExxonMobil’s thinking about global warming.

Now, their lawyers, I think, were very cautious about this and didn’t want ExxonMobil to admit liability, admit that it had been doing anything wrong before. So at first, their communication strategy was: “We were never wrong; we were only misunderstood. So let us tell you what it was we always meant to say.” And in the course of that somewhat convoluted new communications campaign, they started to say: “The risks of global warming are a serious matter. We’re seized of those risks and concerns, and we want to engage in a debate about those risks.” …

Then in 2009, they went further. At that time, the Obama administration had just taken office. Congress was preparing to consider and possibly enact climate change legislation, the so-called cap-and-trade bill, which would have created a marketplace and pollution credits and in effect raised a price on carbon-based fuel through a market mechanism.

ExxonMobil saw that legislation coming. They saw that the Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress, they saw this new Democratic president with a great deal of electoral momentum behind him, and they thought, well, we can either stay out of this and get run over by it possibly, or we can come forward and start to join the debate.

So Rex Tillerson flew to Washington in January 2009, and he made an appearance at a think tank called the Woodrow Wilson Center, and he announced that ExxonMobil for the first time supported a carbon tax. It did not support the cap-and-trade mechanism, which it believed was too bureaucratic and unwieldy. But, it said, in principle, we do support the goal of that cap and trade, which is a $20-a-ton, roughly, price on carbon-based fuels. We think it ought to just be imposed straight across the board. But we’re in the game.

Now, some people greeted this announcement with skepticism, thinking that ExxonMobil had just found a new way to oppose the main bill that was on the floor. And in truth that’s what they did. They went out, and they lobbied against cap and trade, which ultimately died for a variety of complicated reasons, mostly having to do with the recession.

But for the first time, the chairman and chief executive of the largest oil company in the United States said forthrightly that the risks of global warming were significant enough to warrant a price on carbon in order to incent[ivize] movement away from fossil fuels. So that’s at least a change from the Lee Raymond era. …

So Exxon walked away. But was damage done?

The public’s doubts about climate science suggests that the legacy of these investments and their campaign after the Kyoto accords is still with us. I can’t think of an area of science that is relevant to public policy where the gap between what most people believe and what 97 percent of qualified scientists — however you want to define that phrase — believe is as wide as in the case of climate science.

<div class="pullquote_right">“I can’t think of an area of science that is relevant to public policy where the gap between what most people believe and what 97 percent of qualified scientists … believe is as wide as in the case of climate science.”</div>

The truth is there really is no debate within climate science about some really important fundamentals: a, the earth is warming at a dangerous pace; b, industrial activity is a forcing mechanism and that unless it is reduced, the pace of warming will continue; and c, while we can’t be exactly certain which in a range of outcomes we will get, even in the best case, unless we reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are being forced into the atmosphere, global temperatures will rise to a dangerous degree.

By dangerous, I mean they will affect global agriculture. They will raise sea levels to a point where they will threaten coastal inhabitants in settlements all around the world. And they may create even more extreme changes in climate that would affect human settlements from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa. …

The impact of these groups, when you looked into this, did it surprise you?

It surprised me that their ideas are still so alive in the public mind. I think there may be an explanation, which is that if you look at American history since the Second World War and since the birth of the environmental movement, really in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans have proved over and over again that they’re willing to tax GROVER themselves to protect living generations from pollution.

So if air pollution threatens the health of your son or daughter, if water pollution threatens the health or increases the likelihood that your granddaughter will contract cancer or some other disease in her lifetime, then you are willing to act.

Even if you are a free-market ideologist, you are willing to say, “This is what government is for, to protect us from acute threats to living generations.”

The problem with climate change is that until recently, I think to many Americans, it has seemed like a threat not to living generations but to future generations. And with that uncertainty, and with the economic climate that we are in, Americans have been unwilling to impose a tax on themselves in order to protect generations as yet unborn.

Now, elsewhere in the world, in the industrialized world, we have seen this equation change when extreme weather has caused living generations to say to themselves: “You know what? This may actually be more like air pollution or water pollution. This may be a threat to living generations. We may be looking at droughts or extreme weather events that could affect the quality of life of my grandchildren who are just 5 years old now.”

In Australia, a country that has politics as resistant to climate regulation as any of the United States, the country just enacted a price on carbon. Why? They just endured the worst drought in recorded Australian history. …

Of course, no scientist can tell you that any particular weather event is directly a result of global warming. But what they can observe is that their prediction has always been that as this process unfolds, extreme weather events will become more frequent; there will be more volatility; and some of the effects, such as the ones we’ve seen, will include drought and extreme temperatures.

So it may be that over the next 10 or 15 years, Americans will reconsider the ideas that were propounded by these campaigners funded by the oil industry in the 1990s, which is to say that there’s a lot of doubt about all of the tenets of this science, and follow a different kind of intuition, which is that this is here with us now.

Do you think down deep inside Exxon somewhere, there’s a fear that a corn farmer in the Midwest looking at a completely brown field today, because of this campaign against the science launched by Exxon, that that farmer will become a plaintiff in the future in some lawsuit related to climate change and global warming?

If I were an ExxonMobil lawyer, I’d be worried about just that scenario. I absolutely would.

ExxonMobil is a corporation with many scientists employed in the United States within its geology departments, within its exploration and engineering departments.

Scientists are all ornery, independent people on the whole, and they have been trained to question consensus thinking, question their superiors, question everything around them. It would be surprising if ExxonMobil had carried out such an anti-science campaign over eight to 10 years and had never had one of its own scientists write a memo inside the corporation that said: “What are you doing? I have a contrary view,” or, “My reading of the evidence is different than what you are funding groups to say,” or, “I’m concerned that we are creating unnecessary liability for ExxonMobil by spreading false ideas.”

Those documents, if exposed by a plaintiff in a lawsuit, whether they were a corn farmer who suffered drought or the inhabitant of some island that started to sink under rising seas, could change the liability that ExxonMobil and other corporations may ultimately face.

Now, remember the instance of the tobacco industry. First of all, those documents were written inside those companies, dissenting documents, in the ’50s and ’60s. It wasn’t until the ’90s that they came out through lawsuits. The wheels of justice are slow.

And in fairness to ExxonMobil, whatever the debate inside the scientists within that corporation, we’re not talking about the same thing as smokers. We’re not talking about what tobacco industry scientists knew, which is that living human beings smoking cigarettes were more likely to die as a result of the withholding of this information. I mean, even in the worst case, the effects of climate change, our collective effects, they’re global effects. They’re going to unfold over a period of decades, and they’re going to unfold in an uncertain pattern. …

This is a very moralistic company. It’s a company that has inherited a very strict ethical regime from the Rockefeller days. Former managers told me as recently as the 1970s, it wasn’t unusual to go to a meeting at Exxon and sit down and pray together before the meeting began. The current chief executive is a self-described evangelical Christian, and there’s quite a lot of moralism in the way the corporation speaks to its constituents and to its employees.

So how do you square that with a campaign that I think will be judged by history as a radical and, in some important respects, dishonest campaign? I can only assume that the authors of that campaign at the corporation say to themselves: “Oh, we didn’t know. There was some uncertainty. And if we’re later proved that our doubts were misplaced, well, they were doubts honestly held at the time, because nobody knew 100 percent of where this science was going.” …

What kinds of groups are they funding now that might have anything to do with this?

… I think they have pulled most of the direct funding for the groups that were campaigning against science in the years after Kyoto, but they’ve remained part of an industry coalition that is focused on delaying any price on carbon and maintaining political resistance to efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency, efforts in the Congress or elsewhere to take any approach that would curtail industrial activity on grounds of climate regulation.

What’s the synergy, if any, between Exxon and the Heartland Institute?

The Heartland Institute was one of the nonprofits that received funding from ExxonMobil during the years that it was campaigning to challenge climate science after the Kyoto accords were enacted.

The Heartland Institute’s tax returns describe the revenue they received from ExxonMobil, and, curiously, they list on one of their returns an ExxonMobil executive who was a lobbyist in ExxonMobil’s Washington office, a gentleman who had come from ExxonMobil’s chemical company, and he’s listed at the Heartland Institute as a government adviser, suggesting that the relationship between Heartland and ExxonMobil went beyond just that of a donor and a recipient organization but that there was some kind of active consulting or advising that was also a part of the partnership. …

As I understand that, they’d say that they don’t receive direct funding from ExxonMobil anymore. And this is one of the institutions that was I think on the list that ExxonMobil made after 2006 where they decided to reduce their funding. …

What do we know about this specific review done on these advocacy groups that caused Exxon to decide to pull a plug on some of its operations?

As this transition in the chief executive’s office took place, the new chief executive ordered a group to study the investments that ExxonMobil had been making to review the communications that ExxonMobil had been putting out and to start to propose alternatives. And in the course of that review, a decision was made to end the funding for the most radical groups and also to publicize the fact that ExxonMobil had ended that funding because they wanted it to be understood that they were making a change.

And certain groups didn’t pass muster.

The smaller groups and the ones that had attracted the most controversy and attention from investigators. And the ones that were not on the main led by scientists seemed to be ideological and really more geared toward public relations and communications strategy than toward public policy research or scientific research.

But the $26 million investment that Exxon made up to that point really created the infrastructure for what today is a very successful battle being waged against candidates in the 2012 election.

Yeah, there’s no question that that movement continues and that it continues to publish, and it continues to pursue many of the same arguments that were developed in that period after the late 1990s. …

<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/steve-coll-how-exxon-shaped-the-climate-debate/">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/environment/climate-of-doubt/steve-coll-how-exxon-shaped-the-climate-debate/</a>

==

ark pipeline spill: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kistner/a-river-of-tar-sands-crud_b_3115998.html?view=print&comm_ref=false">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kistner/a-river-of-tar-sands-crud_b_3115998.html?view=print&comm_ref=false</a>

===

SLAPP

<a href="http://priceofoil.org/release-exxon-pressures-network-into-pulling-ad-from-fox/" target="hplink">Exxon Mobil gave a cease-and-desist order to Comcast</a>, forcing the cable provider to pull <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXV6FW9Vg0I" target="hplink">an ad about climate change</a> from <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/exxon-hates-your-children-ad_n_2662808.html" target="_hplink">Fox News' coverage of the State of the Union address</a> in some areas Tuesday night, according to emails provided to The Huffington Post by one of the groups responsible for the ad.

The satirical spot, which is <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-zeller-jr/amid-heat-records-advocat_b_2442725.html" target="hplink">brazenly titled "Exxon Hates Your Children"</a> and urges Congress to eliminate fossil fuel industry subsidies, was produced by progressive advocacy groups <a href="http://priceofoil.org/" target="hplink">Oil Change International</a>, <a href="http://other98.com/" target="hplink">The Other 98%</a> and <a href="http://environmental-action.org/" target="hplink">Environmental Action</a>. Having already <a href="http://exxonhatesyourchildren.com/watch.html#.UR5ooFpes7Q" target="hplink">aired on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" and "Up With Chris Hayes"</a>, the video has also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXV6FW9Vg0I" target="hplink">been viewed more than 170,000 times on YouTube</a>.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/exxon-cease-and-desist_n_2695472.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/exxon-cease-and-desist_n_2695472.html</a>

===

iraqi-kurd war/ <a href="http://grist.org/news/how-exxonmobil-may-cause-a-civil-war-in-iraq/">http://grist.org/news/how-exxonmobil-may-cause-a-civil-war-in-iraq/ </a>cf chevron

---

ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/full_list/">No. 1 and No. 2</a> on the Fortune 500 Global companies list, announced their third-quarter earnings on Thursday. Compared to last year’s earnings, both companies’ profits are down slightly — 7 percent for Exxon and 15 percent for Shell — on weaker oil prices. However, ExxonMobil and Shell earned <a href="http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_release_earnings_3q12.pdf">$9.6 billion</a> and <a href="http://www-static.shell.com/static/investor/downloads/financial_information/quarterly_results/2012/q3/q3_2012_qra.pdf">$6.1 billion</a> respectively, bringing their total 2012 profits to $35 billion for Exxon and $18.9 billion for Shell.

These two companies, along with the rest of the Big Five, continue to receive century-old annual tax breaks. At the same time, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/24/1064231/three-ways-big-oil-spends-its-profits-to-defend-oil-subsidies-and-defeat-clean-energy/">Exxon and Shell funnel</a> a portion of their dollars toward lobbying against environment and public health protections, while also funding climate denier candidates. This summer, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said that he recognized carbon pollution causes warming, but minimized the full impact saying <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/27/507710/as-exxon-ceo-calls-global-warmings-impacts-manageable-colorado-wildfires-shutter-climate-lab/">��those consequences are manageable.”</a> Meanwhile, extreme weather damages in the U.S. alone have potentially cost <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/11/01/43504/preventing-future-frankenstorms/">up to $144 billion</a> since 2011.

Below are the highlights of where Exxon and Shell spend their earnings:

ExxonMobil:

– Exxon received an estimated <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/green/report/2012/07/26/11880/romney-tax-plan-many-happy-returns-for-big-oil/#.UIf368y0-SA.email">$600 million in annual tax breaks</a>. It paid just a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/26/452213/exxon-mobils-tax-rate-drops-to-13-percent-after-making-35-percent-more-profits-in-2011/">13 percent federal tax rate</a>.

– Exxon spent <a href="http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_release_earnings_3q12.pdf">$5.1 billion</a> — or 53 percent– of this quarter’s profits to buy back its own stock, which enriches the largest shareholders.

– Oil production for Exxon for Q3 in 2012 is <a href="http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/news_release_earnings_3q12.pdf">5 percent lower</a> than this time last year (2.1 million of barrels per day in Q3 2012 vs. 2.2 million in Q3 2011).

– In 2012 alone, Exxon spent $12.7 million lobbying Congress, according to the latest Federal Election Commission figures.

– Exxon spent $2.1 million on direct federal and congressional campaign contributions so far in the 2012 election cycle, with <a title="90" href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000129&cycle=2012" target="_blank">90 percent </a>going to Republicans.

– Some of the biggest Congressional recipients <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/toprecips.php?id=D000000129&cycle=2012">include</a> Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

�� Exxon’s CEO Rex Tillerson’s total compensation in 2011 was <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/rex-tillerson-1/">$34.9 million</a>.

</blockquote>

Royal Dutch Shell:

– Shell received a <a href="http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/green/report/2012/07/26/11880/romney-tax-plan-many-happy-returns-for-big-oil/#.UIf368y0-SA.email">$200 million annual tax break</a> in 2011.

– Shell has <a href="http://www-static.shell.com/static/investor/downloads/financial_information/quarterly_results/2012/q3/q3_2012_qra.pdf">$18.8 billion</a> in cash-on-hand.

– In the third quarter, Shell used $149 million of its profits to buy back its own stock.

– Shell’s oil production <a href="http://www-static.shell.com/static/investor/downloads/financial_information/quarterly_results/2012/q3/q3_2012_qra.pdf">decreased by 5 percent</a> compared to this time last year (1.59 million of barrels per day in 2012 vs. 1.67 million in 2011).

– Shell spent more on lobbying than the other Big Oil companies – $12.9 million so far in the 2012 election cycle – according to the latest Federal Election Commission figures.

–Shell just finished drilling top holes in <a href="http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/Shell-ends-2012-Arctic-Ocean-drilling-off-Alaska-3997858.php">Arctic waters</a> for the year, after issues with its containment barge and ice flows created delays.

</blockquote>

The last of the Big Five oil companies, Chevron, will release its third quarter profits Friday.

===

bill mck RS 8/15

According to the Carbon Tracker report, if Exxon burns its current reserves, it would use up more than seven percent of the available atmospheric space between us and the risk of two degrees. BP is just behind, followed by the Russian firm Gazprom, then Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell, each of which would fill between three and four percent. Taken together, just these six firms, of the 200 listed in the Carbon Tracker report, would use up more than a quarter of the remaining two-degree budget. Severstal, the Russian mining giant, leads the list of coal companies, followed by firms like BHP Billiton and Peabody. The numbers are simply staggering – this industry, and this industry alone, holds the power to change the physics and chemistry of our planet, and they're planning to use it.

They're clearly cognizant of global warming – they employ some of the world's best scientists, after all, and they're bidding on all those oil leases made possible by the staggering melt of Arctic ice. And yet they relentlessly search for more hydrocarbons – in early March, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson told Wall Street analysts that the company plans to spend $37 billion a year through 2016 (about $100 million a day) searching for yet more oil and gas.

There's not a more reckless man on the planet than Tillerson. Late last month, on the same day the Colorado fires reached their height, he told a New York audience that global warming is real, but dismissed it as an "engineering problem" that has "engineering solutions." Such as? "Changes to weather patterns that move crop-production areas around – we'll adapt to that." This in a week when Kentucky farmers were reporting that corn kernels were "aborting" in record heat, threatening a spike in global food prices. "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say, 'We just have to stop this,' I do not accept," Tillerson said. Of course not – if he did accept it, he'd have to keep his reserves in the ground. Which would cost him money. It's not an engineering problem, in other words – it's a greed problem.

You could argue that this is simply in the nature of these companies – that having found a profitable vein, they're compelled to keep mining it, more like efficient automatons than people with free will. But as the Supreme Court has made clear, they are people of a sort. In fact, thanks to the size of its bankroll, the fossil-fuel industry has far more free will than the rest of us. These companies don't simply exist in a world whose hungers they fulfill – they help create the boundaries of that world.

==

Pail Ryan supports $40 billion in subsides for big oil. In 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2011-153">vote</a> to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/03/ryan_big_oil.html">retain</a> a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years — or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012 — on energy programs.

8. Ryan has ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies . Ryan “and his wife, Janna, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/17/247570/paul-ryan-family-beneft-subsidies-for-big-oil-in-his-budget/">own stakes</a> in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan��s budget plan,” the Daily Beast <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/17/paul-ryan-s-shrewd-budget-payday-congressman-could-benefit-from-tax-breaks-he-proposes.html">reported</a> in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”

---

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/author/rleber/">Leber</a> and <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/author/joe/">Joe Romm</a> on Jun 27, 2012 at 6:50 pm

Fueled by a <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/20/501081/connecting-the-dots-how-climate-change-is-fueling-western-wildfires/">warming climate</a>, Colorado is experiencing its worst fire season in its history.

As researchers at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/06/wildfire-risk-shutters-boulder.html?ref=em">joined 32,000 other Coloradans in fleeing the fires</a>, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations about the “manageable” risks of climate change:

Rex Tillerson said at a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that climate change was a “great challenge,” but it could be solved by adapting to risks such as higher sea levels and changing conditions for agriculture.

“As a species that’s why we’re all still here: we have spent our entire existence adapting. So we will adapt to this,” he said. “It’s an engineering problem, and it has engineering solutions.”

</blockquote>

Tillerson’s flippant remarks about “adapting” to the “manageable” consequences of climate change come at a time that Exxon is making <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/01/31/415242/exxonmobil-made-411-billion-in-2011-but-pays-estimated-176-percent-tax-rate/">record profits.</a> In 2011, the company made $41.1 billion in profits, and Tillerson pulled in $34.9 million total compensation — a 20 percent raise from 2010.

A 2011 study <a href="http://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-change-papers-exxon-mobil/">found that</a> “9 out of 10 top climate change deniers [were] linked with Exxon Mobil.” So it��s no surprise that Exxon’s CEO would spread misinformation on global warming.

Climate Progress is unaware of any serious climate scientists who think that global warming is “manageable” simply through adaptation if we listen to the do-nothing Exxon crowd and stay anywhere near our current emissions path. We know a great many who have written that the reverse is true (see below).

It’s also worth nothing that by mid-century, wildfires in the West  our projected to be far, far worse. Here’s the grim projection from a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/jph-kavli-9-2010.pdf">presentation</a> made by the President’s science adviser Dr. John Holdren in Oslo in 2010:...<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/27/507710/as-exxon-ceo-calls-global-warmings-impacts-manageable-colorado-wildfires-shutter-climate-lab/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/27/507710/as-exxon-ceo-calls-global-warmings-impacts-manageable-colorado-wildfires-shutter-climate-lab/</a>

</div>

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goodman btsb

world's largest publically traded co; most profitable corp in hist 53, UCS study doubt: funded 43 astroturf for 16m$

---

nb; cointel pro might be mostly BP

===

funds alec on fracking

By Jessica Goad

As the New York Times reported last month, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/08/05/288823/alec-exposed-corporations-funding/">corporate front group</a>, has been behind various efforts to enact <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=politics&pagewanted=all">watered down state regulations</a> for the natural gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The Times noted that ALEC’s model legislation being shopped to state legislators was<a title="sponsored" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html?pagewanted=2&ref=politics" target="_blank"> sponsored</a> by Exxon Mobil. And now, new documents show how Exxon’s donations to ALEC match up with the timing of the development of fracking legislation.

According to Exxon’s 2011 <a href="http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Files/gcr_contributions_pubpolicy11.pdf">corporate giving report</a>, ALEC was listed as the recipient of $86,500:

American Legislative Exchange Council, Washington, D.C.

-  General Support:  74,000

-  ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit:  12,500

</blockquote>

The “<a href="http://www.alec.org/meetings/states-nation-policy-summit-2011/">ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit</a>,” to which Exxon gave $12,500, took place in Scottsdale, Arizona, in December 2011.  And according to both the Times and an ALEC blog, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html?_r=1&ref=politics&pagewanted=all">hydraulic fracturing disclosure language</a> was approved by the organization as a <a href="http://www.americanlegislator.org/2012/03/alec-encourages-responsible-resource-production/">model bill</a> in December 2011.

At issue is whether natural gas companies should be required to inform the public about the type of chemicals being pumped underground to facilitate the extraction of gas. Some of those chemicals are <a href="http://www.propublica.org/article/fracking-chemicals-cited-in-congressional-report-stay-underground">known or suspected carcinogens</a>.  At first glance Exxon and ALEC’s sponsorship of fracking disclosure laws seems commendable; however, a closer glance reveals that the legislation actually <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/us/alec-a-tax-exempt-group-mixes-legislators-and-lobbyists.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ref=politics&pagewanted=all">contains serious loopholes</a> for companies wanting to protect “trade secrets.”

Ohio is “<a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/alec-slips-exxon-fracking-loopholes-new-ohio-law-1338539750">in the final stages</a>” of enacting regulations address hydraulic fracturing chemical disclosure. But as Connor Gibson at Nation of Change <a href="http://www.nationofchange.org/alec-slips-exxon-fracking-loopholes-new-ohio-law-1338539750">notes</a>:

<blockquote>At least 33 of the 45 Ohio legislators who co-sponsored SB 315 are ALEC members, and language from portions of the state Senate bill is similar to ALEC’s ��Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act.”</blockquote>

Exxon is the <a href="http://www.chron.com/business/article/Exxon-Mobil-moves-to-expand-chemical-plant-3603742.php">largest producer of natural gas in the country</a>, a position solidified after its purchase of natural gas company XTO in 2010.

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/04/494650/exxon-contributes-86000-to-alec-which-then-helps-promote-weak-fracking-regulations/">http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/04/494650/exxon-contributes-86000-to-alec-which-then-helps-promote-weak-fracking-regulations/</a>

===

<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/7/exxonmobils_dirty_secrets_from_indonesia_to">http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/7/exxonmobils_dirty_secrets_from_indonesia_to</a>

<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/appearances/steve_coll">Steve Coll</a>, President of the New America Foundation and a staff writer at The New Yorker. His most recent book is called, “Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power.” Previously, he was managing editor of the Washington Post and has also been a reporter, foreign correspondent and editor at the paper. He was awarded his second Pulitzer Prize for the book, ��Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the C.I.A., Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to Sept. 10, 2001.” He is also author of “The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century.”

ex ceo  lee raymond is exception pal of dick cheney (both Midwest, neighbors, hunt pals); exxon rel to gov't complex, but exxon sees itself as sovereign w/ own economic and for policy, sorta like france

===

180 on funding?

But more recently, publicity about the workings of the denial movement appears to have resulted in some tactical changes. ExxonMobil announced last year that in 2006 it stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-enterprise policy group, and that it would no longer fund several other groups active in the global warming debate.

“Over the past several years, we have discontinued contributions to several public policy research groups whose position was diverting attention from the issue,” said Alan Jeffers, the spokesman for the ExxonMobil Corporation. “We felt that we would prefer to focus on solutions and how to move forward rather than this distraction.”

To Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace USA, such statements illuminate ExxonMobil’s original intent.

“That’s an admission that the funding they were giving was a diversion,” Davies said. “That it was a tactical delivery of diversion, and now they’ve realized they’ve been caught.”

Not so, says ExxonMobil��s Jeffers. He says the company has never dictated policy positions or findings to sponsored groups, but instead funds a broad range of groups to promote discussion on issues.

“We’re not funding climate denial,” said Jeffers. “We’re not telling organizations what to say. We never have.”

The Competitive Enterprise Institute was not the only group that lost a big chunk of its funding from ExxonMobil. Among the other groups that have lost funding, according to ExxonMobil’s corporate giving reports, are these other groups involved in conservative challenges to climate science:

Federal Focus: A nonprofit research and education foundation that focuses on science policy.

The Advancement of Sound Science Center, The Free Enterprise Education Institute, and the Free Enterprise Action Institute: All were or are run by prominent skeptic Steven Milloy.

The Institute for Study of Earth and Man, at Southern Methodist University, in Texas: The Institute promotes education and research in geology, archeology, anthropology, energy, and environmental sciences.

The International Republican Institute: Seeks to advances freedom and democracy worldwide by developing political parties, civic institutions, open elections, good governance, and rule of law. IRI is affiliated with the Republican Party and is chaired by its presidential nominee, Senator John McCain. It and a Democratic counterpart receive most of their funding from the U.S. government.

The Media Institute: Describes itself as “a nonprofit research foundation specializing in communications policy and the First Amendment.��

The Reason Foundation and the Reason Public Policy Institute: The foundation seeks to promote “libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.��

The Heartland Institute: A libertarian think tank that sponsored the conference on global warming in March.

A few months ago, ExxonMobil also announced it would de-fund the Capital Research Center, which advocates private alternatives to government regulation; The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which works on food, water, environmental, and energy policy; The Frontiers of Freedom Institute, founded by former Republican Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming, whose mission is to promote conservative public policy based on free enterprise principles; The George C. Marshall Institute, which conducts technical assessments of scientific issues with an impact on public policy; and The Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit that conducts intensive research on government regulation of global energy markets.

While ExxonMobil’s Jeffers would not say that the new funding decisions were rooted in shifting policies at ExxonMobil, he stressed that there is now solid evidence of climate change.

“We had scientists on the IPCC; we know what the IPCC report says,�� Jeffers said. “There is no disputing that good evidence shows that the climate has warmed. Our position is that the risk of man being involved in it warrants action in terms of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Everybody has learned more. The thinking has evolved.”

...

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2008/09/30/3047/global-warming-heated-denials

RS 12

As the world's biggest carbon polluter — its oil spews an estimated 1 trillion pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere each year — ExxonMobil has the most at stake in the battle over climate legislation. In a sharp and cynical ploy, Tillerson rejected the cap-and-trade system being considered by Congress last year and instead backed a direct tax on carbon pollution — perhaps the most effective way to halt global warming, but one he knew had absolutely no chance of passing. To cover his bets, Tillerson also poured $27 million into lobbying, much of it directed toward killing the climate bill. Such tactics may endanger the planet, but they help protect ExxonMobil's bottom line. With the threat of regulation successfully eliminated, the world's richest corporation grew even richer, posting $7 billion in profits in the third quarter alone — roughly $100 million a day. And with ice in the Arctic vanishing at an unprecedented pace �� melting that one climate scientist calls a "death spiral" — ExxonMobil could even be drilling for oil and gas beneath the North Pole in the not-so-distant future.

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mojo 2/10

ExxonMobil is <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html">still funding groups</a> that deny climate change, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html?_r=1">despite claiming last year that it had stopped</a> doing so.

Reports the Independent:

<blockquote>Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe.</blockquote>

Josh Harkinson <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/climate-deniers-atlas-foundation?page=1">reported on Atlas</a>'s role in the international climate change denier web in December, and Exxon <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-exxon">topped our list of climate deniers</a> in December. In fact, they've been the top source of climate-change-denier funding for some time, as  <a href="http://motherjones.com/environment/2005/05/some-it-hot">Chris Mooney reported for Mother Jones in 2005</a>. Exxon gave Atlas $100,000 in 2008, according to the oil company's reports, and Atlas has in turn supported at least 30 other foreign think-tanks that spread climate change misinformation. A number of these groups have been at the forefront of efforts to <a href="http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/11/climategate">flog the so-called ClimateGate issue</a>, and are now <a href="http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/more-problems-ipcc">leading assaults</a> on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

ExxonMobil's response? "We have the same concerns as people everywhere—and that is how to provide the world with the energy it needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions," the company said in a statement to the Independent. Yes, ExxonMobil, the fossil fuel-giant, is just like "people everywhere."

see also Soon story 5/11

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SW on exxon:

Exxon Mobil is the world's largest oil company and one of the world's largest publicly traded companies. It engages in oil and gas exploration, production, supply, transportation, and marketing around the world. It has proved reserves of just less than 21 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Exxon Mobil's refineries can handle more than 6 million barrels per day, and the company supplies refined products to more than 40,000 service stations in 118 countries that operate under the Exxon, Esso, and Mobil brands (including more than 16,000 in the US)." <a href="http://www.hoovers.com/co/capsule/7/0,2163,10537,00.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.hoovers.com/co/capsule/7/0,2163,10537,00.html" rel="nofollow">[1]</a>

Exxon Mobil's CEO, Rex Tillerson, made $22.4 million in 2009.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-0" title="">[1]</a> Exxon Mobil is also a member of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Legislative_Exchange_Council" title="American Legislative Exchange Council">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC).

Kevin Murphy, a public affairs representative of ExxonMobil, is on the Private Enterprise Board of ALEC as of 2011....

<h4>Skeptic funding progressively cut back under Rex Tillerson</h4>

<blockquote>"Exxon will not contribute to some nine groups in 2008 that it funded in 2007...The groups Exxon has stopped funding include the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Capital_Research_Center" title="Capital Research Center">Capital Research Center</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_for_a_Constructive_Tomorrow" title="Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow">Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frontiers_of_Freedom_Institute" title="Frontiers of Freedom Institute" class="mw-redirect">Frontiers of Freedom Institute</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_C._Marshall_Institute" title="George C. Marshall Institute">George C. Marshall Institute</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Energy_Research" title="Institute for Energy Research">Institute for Energy Research</a>... Exxon's tone on climate change has softened since Tillerson took the reins of the company at the beginning of 2006, replacing the often-combative Lee Raymond. Tillerson has said that nations should work toward a global policy to fight climate change and in 2006 [and again in 2007] the company stopped funding a handful of groups that were climate change skeptics. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-2" title="">[3]</a></blockquote>

But Exxon continued to fund a further 28 groups which campaigned against climate science. And the <a href="http://cspinet.org/" class="external text" title="http://cspinet.org/" rel="nofollow">Center for Science in the public Interest</a> stated in June 2008, "Each group continued to receive Exxon funding in 2007 after the company’s first announcement that it would discontinue the payments. Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on how serious it was in following through on its plans." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-3" title="">[4]</a>.

In 2011, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Warming_Policy_Foundation" title="Global Warming Policy Foundation">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>'s website ran the headline "900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism Of 'Man-Made' Global Warming (AGW) Alarm," listing more than 900 papers which, according to the GWPF, refute "concern relating to a negative environmental or socio-economic effect of AGW, usually exaggerated as catastrophic." However, a preliminary data analysis by the Carbon Brief revealed that nine of the ten most prolific authors cited have links to organisations funded by ExxonMobil, and the tenth has co-authored several papers with Exxon-funded contributors. The top ten contributors alone were responsible for 186 of the papers (over 20%) cited by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-tcb-4" title="">[5]</a>

Dr <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sherwood_Idso" title="Sherwood Idso" class="mw-redirect">Sherwood Idso</a> was the most cited academic on the list, having authored or co-authored 67 of the 938 papers, seven percent of the total. Idso is president of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_the_Study_of_Carbon_Dioxide_and_Global_Change" title="Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change">Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change</a>, a think tank which has been funded by ExxonMobil. Idso has also been linked to the Information Council on the Environment ( ICE ), an energy industry PR campaign accused of "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturfing" title="Astroturfing" class="mw-redirect">astroturfing</a>". The second most cited is Dr <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Michaels" title="Patrick Michaels" class="mw-redirect">Patrick Michaels</a> - with 28 papers to his name. Michaels is a well known climate sceptic who has revealed that he receives around 40% of his funding from the oil industry. Third most cited is Agricultural scientist Dr. Bruce Kimball - the list shows that all of his cited papers were co-authored with Dr Sherwood B Idso.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-tcb-4" title="">[5]</a>

Also included was <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Willie_Soon" title="Willie Soon">Willie Soon</a>, a senior scientist at the Exxon funded George C. Marshall Institute, and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Christy" title="John Christy" class="mw-redirect">John Christy</a>, also a Marshall Institute "expert." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ross_McKitrick" title="Ross McKitrick">Ross McKitrick</a> is a senior fellow at the Exxon funded Fraser institute and on the academic advisory board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Dr <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Indur_Goklany" title="Indur Goklany">Indur Goklany</a> is affiliated with the Exxon Funded thinktank the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Policy_Network" title="International Policy Network">International Policy Network</a> (US). <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sallie_Baliunas" title="Sallie Baliunas" class="mw-redirect">Sallie Baliunas</a> is listed by the Union of Concerned Scientists as being affiliated with nine different organisations who have all received funding from ExxonMobil, including the George C Marshall Institute. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen" title="Richard Lindzen" class="mw-redirect">Richard Lindzen</a>, a climate scientist and prominent sceptic, is a member of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Annapolis_Center_for_Science-Based_Public_Policy" title="Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy">Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy</a>, which has also received Exxon funding. The final name in the top 10 contributors - <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=David_Douglass" title="David Douglass">David Douglass</a> - has written several papers with Singer, Christie and Michaels - six of the fifteen papers he authored on the list were written with Michaels, Singer or Christie.<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-tcb-4" title="">[5]</a>

<h3>2009+: Green company or no? Lobbying expenditures continue</h3>

In 2009, Exxon Mobil spent $27.5 million in lobbying against global warming, which is their second highest year on the books after 2008 election year. <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-5" title="">[6]</a> Odwyer's Magazine describes Exxon's efforts as misleading: "ExxonMobil, absurdly praised in August by Forbes as “green company of the year,” was discovered the same month by the New York Times to have given major funding to industry groups like the now-defunct Global Climate Coalition, an organization that had silenced its own scientific reports and falsified information for more than a decade." <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil#cite_note-6" title="">[7]</a>

In 2010, the Walkley Foundation, the professional development arm of Australia's media union the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, chose Exxon Mobil as the Gold sponsor for its August 2010 annual conference. In July, there were reports on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's PM program and News Corporation's The Australian<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/exxon-still-aids-climate-sceptics/story-e6frg6so-1225894256861" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/exxon-still-aids-climate-sceptics/story-e6frg6so-1225894256861" rel="nofollow">[4]</a> that Exxon Mobil had broken its pledge not to fund climate skeptics. The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) opposed the sponsorship and began a public petition <a href="http://www.acij.uts.edu.au" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.acij.uts.edu.au" rel="nofollow">[5]</a> signed by journalists, environmentalists and academics asking the union to reconsider their agreement.

<h2>Exxon's Tiger PR...</h2>

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<h1><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/gulf-oil-spill-testimony-rex-tillerson-exxon-mobil_n_613743.html" id="title_permalink">Gulf Oil Spill Testimony: Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil CEO, Admits Being Helpless At Handling Major Oil Spills (VIDEO)</a></h1>

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/gulf-oil-spill-testimony-rex-tillerson-exxon-mobil_n_613743.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/gulf-oil-spill-testimony-rex-tillerson-exxon-mobil_n_613743.html</a>

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denies peak oil <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjG3HRUYVo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjG3HRUYVo</a>  2007

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gop war on sci:

exxon hit list of gov sci, incl IPCC

chair! watson 83

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<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Exxon+Mobil&year=2009">ExxonMobil</a>, the industry leader in 2009, spent $27.4 million in lobbying expenditures that year -- more than the entire pro-environment lobby.

<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/pro-environment-groups-were-outmatc.html">http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/pro-environment-groups-were-outmatc.html</a>

<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Exxon+Mobil&year=2009">http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?lname=Exxon+Mobil&year=2009</a>

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GP

Sallie B also worked for the Greening Earth Society, a front group for the Western Fuels Association (the coal

industry) that promoted the idea that the increased CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels is greening the

earth (leading to more plant growth)33.

By the mid-90s the GCC started to draw heavy criticism, and leading members began distancing themselves

from it. Instead companies like Exxon and Mobil turned to front groups and conservative think tanks who could

continue the campaign on their behalf.

They were already funding The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), set up by the tobacco

industry in 1993 to ‘promote sound science’34.

Other groups in the core list of Exxon’s funding included the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive

Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, Frontiers of Freedom and the Hoover Institute. By 1998 when Exxon

and Mobil merged, they were funding 21 different organisations that challenged climate science. In total, over

the years since then, ExxonMobil has funded a total of 70 groups running the campaign35.

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_warming_skeptics

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon-Funded_Skeptics">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon-Funded_Skeptics</a>

The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Exxon" class="mw-redirect" title="Exxon">Exxon</a> corporation has long been involved in creating confusion regarding <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_warming" title="Global warming">global warming</a> and the creation and funding of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_warming_skeptics" title="Global warming skeptics">Global warming skeptics</a>.

A <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html" class="external text" rel="nofollow" title="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ExxonMobil-GlobalWarming-tobacco.html">study</a> by the US <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Union_of_Concerned_Scientists" title="Union of Concerned Scientists">Union of Concerned Scientists</a> reports that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report says, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community. <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2612021&page=1" class="external autonumber" rel="nofollow" title="http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2612021&page=1">[1]</a>

See <a href="http://exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php" class="external text" rel="nofollow" title="http://exxonsecrets.org/html/listorganizations.php">exxonsecrets.org</a> for fact-sheets on <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ExxonMobil_funding_recipients" class="mw-redirect" title="ExxonMobil funding recipients">funding recipients</a>.

During 2002, ExxonMobil donated $5.6 million to public policy organizations which share its agenda, either on climate change denial or general extreme free market advocacy. These included: <a href="http://www2.exxonmobil.com/files/corporate/public_policy1.pdf" class="external autonumber" rel="nofollow" title="http://www2.exxonmobil.com/files/corporate/public_policy1.pdf">[2]</a>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Acton_Institute" title="Acton Institute">Acton Institute</a>, ($30,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute" title="American Enterprise Institute">American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research</a> ($200,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Atlas_Economic_Research_Foundation" title="Atlas Economic Research Foundation">Atlas Economic Research Foundation</a> ($50,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute" title="Cato Institute">Cato Institute</a> ($30,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_Strategic_and_International_Studies" title="Center for Strategic and International Studies">Center for Strategic and International Studies</a> ($145,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Committee_for_Economic_Development" title="Committee for Economic Development">Committee for Economic Development</a> ($75,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute" title="Competitive Enterprise Institute">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a> ($405,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Foundation_for_American_Communications" title="Foundation for American Communications">Foundation for American Communications</a> ($175,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Frontiers_of_Freedom" title="Frontiers of Freedom">Frontiers of Freedom</a> ($233,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_C._Marshall_Foundation" title="George C. Marshall Foundation">George C. Marshall Foundation</a> (90,000)</li>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Reason_Foundation" title="Reason Foundation">Reason Foundation</a> ($50,000)</li>

</ul>

=

http://motherjones.com/environment/2005/05/some-it-hot

...

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise. Conservative think tanks are trying to undermine this conclusion with a disinformation campaign employing “reports” designed to look like a counterbalance to peer-reviewed studies, skeptic propaganda masquerading as journalism, and events like the AEI luncheon that Crichton addressed. The think tanks provide both intellectual cover for those who reject what the best science currently tells us, and ammunition for conservative policymakers like Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who calls global warming “a hoax.”

This concerted effort reflects the shared convictions of free-market, and thus antiregulatory, conservatives. But there’s another factor at play. In addition to being supported by like-minded individuals and ideologically sympathetic foundations, these groups are funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company. Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of “skeptic” scientists who continue to do so. Beyond think tanks, the count also includes quasi-journalistic outlets like Tech CentralStation.com (a website providing “news, analysis, research, and commentary” that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups. In total, these organizations received more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which records are available; all figures below are for that range unless otherwise noted). ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Lee Raymond serves as vice chairman of the board of trustees for the AEI, which received $960,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The AEI-Brookings Institution Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, which officially hosted Crichton, received another $55,000. When asked about the event, the center’s executive director, Robert Hahn—who’s a fellow with the AEI—defended it, saying, “Climate science is a field in which reasonable experts can disagree.” (By contrast, on the day of the event, the Brookings Institution posted a scathing critique of Crichton’s book.)

During the question-and-answer period following his speech, Crichton drew an analogy between believers in global warming and Nazi eugenicists. “Auschwitz exists because of politicized science,” Crichton asserted, to gasps from some in the crowd. There was no acknowledgment that the AEI event was part of an attempt to do just that: politicize science. The audience at hand was certainly full of partisans. Listening attentively was Myron Ebell, a man recently censured by the British House of Commons for “unfounded and insulting criticism of Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientist.” Ebell is the global warming and international policy director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has received a whopping $1,380,000 from ExxonMobil. Sitting in the back of the room was Christopher Horner, the silver-haired counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition who’s also a CEI senior fellow. Present also was Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise ($40,000 in 2003). Saying he’s “heartened that ExxonMobil and a couple of other groups have stood up and said, ‘this is not science,’” Driessen, who is white, has made it his mission to portray Kyoto-style emissions regulations as an attack on people of color—his recent book is entitled Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (see “Black Gold?”). Driessen has also written about the role that think tanks can play in helping corporations achieve their objectives. Such outlets “can provide research, present credible independent voices on a host of issues, indirectly influence opinion and political leaders, and promote responsible social and economic agendas,” he advised companies in a 2001 essay published in Capital PR News. “They have extensive networks among scholars, academics, scientists, journalists, community leaders and politicians…. You will be amazed at how much they do with so little.”

THIRTY YEARS AGO, the notion that corporations ought to sponsor think tanks that directly support their own political goals—rather than merely fund disinterested research��was far more controversial. But then, in 1977, an associate of the AEI (which was founded as a business association in 1943) came to industry’s rescue. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal, the influential neoconservative Irving Kristol memorably counseled that “corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested,” but should serve as a means “to shape or reshape the climate of public opinion.”

Kristol’s advice was heeded, and today many businesses give to public policy groups that support a laissez-faire, antiregulatory agenda. In its giving report, ExxonMobil says it supports public policy groups that are “dedicated to researching free market solutions to policy problems.” What the company doesn’t say is that beyond merely challenging the Kyoto Protocol or the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act on economic grounds, many of these groups explicitly dispute the science of climate change. Generally eschewing peer-reviewed journals, these groups make their challenges in far less stringent arenas, such as the media and public forums.

Pressed on this point, spokeswoman Lauren Kerr says that “ExxonMobil has been quite transparent and vocal regarding the fact that we, as do multiple organizations and respected institutions and researchers, believe that the scientific evidence on greenhouse gas emissions remains inconclusive and that studies must continue.” She also hastens to point out that ExxonMobil generously supports university research programs—for example, the company plans to donate $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. It even funds the hallowed National Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, no company appears to be working harder to support those who debunk global warming. “Many corporations have funded, you know, dribs and drabs here and there, but I would be surprised to learn that there was a bigger one than Exxon,” explains Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which, in 2000 and again in 2003, sued the government to stop the dissemination of a Clinton-era report showing the impact of climate change in the United States. Attorney Christopher Horner—whom you’ll recall from Crichton’s audience—was the lead attorney in both lawsuits and is paid a $60,000 annual consulting fee by the CEI. In 2002, ExxonMobil explicitly earmarked $60,000 for the CEI for ��legal activities.”

Ebell denies the sum indicates any sort of quid pro quo. He’s proud of ExxonMobil��s funding and wishes “we could attract more from other companies.” He stresses that the CEI solicits funding for general project areas rather than to carry out specific sponsor requests, but admits being steered (as other public policy groups are steered) to the topics that garner grant money. While noting that the CEI is “adamantly opposed” to the Endangered Species Act, Ebell adds that “we are only working on it in a limited way now, because we couldn’t attract funding.”

EXXONMOBIL’S FUNDING OF THINK TANKS hardly compares with its lobbying expenditures—$55 million over the past six years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And neither figure takes much of a bite out of the company’s net earnings—$25.3 billion last year. Nevertheless, “ideas lobbying” can have a powerful public policy effect.

Consider attacks by friends of ExxonMobil on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). A landmark international study that combined the work of some 300 scientists, the ACIA, released last November, had been four years in the making. Commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that includes the United States, the study warned that the Arctic is warming “at almost twice the rate as that of the rest of the world,” and that early impacts of climate change, such as melting sea ice and glaciers, are already apparent and “will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals, and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.” Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was so troubled by the report that he called for a Senate hearing.

Industry defenders shelled the study, and, with a dearth of science to marshal to their side, used opinion pieces and press releases instead. “Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice,” blared FoxNews.com columnist Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute ($75,000 from ExxonMobil) who also publishes the website JunkScience.com. Two days later the conservative Washington Times published the same column. Neither outlet disclosed that Milloy, who debunks global warming concerns regularly, runs two organizations that receive money from ExxonMobil. Between 2000 and 2003, the company gave $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center, which is registered to Milloy’s home address in Potomac, Maryland, according to IRS documents. ExxonMobil gave another $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute—also registered to Milloy��s residence. Under the auspices of the intriguingly like-named Free Enterprise Education Institute, Milloy publishes CSRWatch.com, a site that attacks the corporate social responsibility movement. Milloy did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article; a Fox News spokesman stated that Milloy is “affiliated with several not-for-profit groups that possibly may receive funding from Exxon, but he certainly does not receive funding directly from Exxon.”

Setting aside any questions about Milloy’s journalistic ethics, on a purely scientific level, his attack on the ACIA was comically inept. Citing a single graph from a 146-page overview of a 1,200-plus- page, fully referenced report, Milloy claimed that the document “pretty much debunks itself” because high Arctic temperatures “around 1940” suggest that the current temperature spike could be chalked up to natural variability. “In order to take that position,” counters Harvard biological oceanographer James McCarthy, a lead author of the report, “you have to refute what are hundreds of scientific papers that reconstruct various pieces of this climate puzzle.��

Nevertheless, Milloy’s charges were quickly echoed by other groups. TechCentralStation.com published a letter to Senator McCain from 11 “climate experts,” who asserted that recent Arctic warming was not at all unusual in comparison to “natural variability in centuries past.” Meanwhile, the conservative George C. Marshall Institute ($310,000) issued a press release asserting that the Arctic report was based on “unvalidated climate models and scenarios…that bear little resemblance to reality and how the future is likely to evolve.” In response, McCain said, “General Marshall was a great American. I think he might be very embarrassed to know that his name was being used in this disgraceful fashion.”

The day of McCain’s hearing, the Competitive Enterprise Institute put out its own press release, citing the aforementioned critiques as if they should be considered on a par with the massive, exhaustively reviewed Arctic report: “The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, despite its recent release, has already generated analysis pointing out numerous flaws and distortions.” The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute ($60,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003) also weighed in, calling the Arctic warming report “an excellent example of the favoured scare technique of the anti-energy activists: pumping largely unjustifiable assumptions about the future into simplified computer models to conjure up a laundry list of scary projections.” In the same release, the Fraser Institute declared that “2004 has been one of the cooler years in recent history.” A month later the United Nations�� World Meteorological Organization would pronounce 2004 to be “the fourth warmest year in the temperature record since 1861.”

Frank O’Donnell, of Clean Air Watch, likens ExxonMobil’s strategy to that of “a football quarterback who doesn’t want to throw to one receiver, but rather wants to spread it around to a number of different receivers.” In the case of the ACIA, this echo-chamber offense had the effect of creating an appearance of scientific controversy. Senator Inhofe—who received nearly $290,000 from oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, for his 2002 reelection campaign—prominently cited the Marshall Institute’s work in his own critique of the latest science.

TO BE SURE, that science wasn’t always as strong as it is today. And until fairly recently, virtually the entire fossil fuels industry—automakers, utilities, coal companies, even railroads—joined ExxonMobil in challenging it.

The concept of global warming didn’t enter the public consciousness until the 1980s. During a sweltering summer in 1988, pioneering NASA climatologist James Hansen famously told Congress he believed with “99 percent confidence” that a long-term warming trend had begun, probably caused by the greenhouse effect. As environmentalists and some in Congress began to call for reduced emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, industry fought back.

In 1989, the petroleum and automotive industries and the National Association of Manufacturers forged the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory actions to address global warming. Exxon—later ExxonMobil—was a leading member, as was the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for which Exxon’s CEO Lee Raymond has twice served as chairman. “They were a strong player in the Global Climate Coalition, as were many other sectors of the economy,” says former GCC spokesman Frank Maisano.

Drawing upon a cadre of skeptic scientists, during the early and mid-1990s the GCC sought to emphasize the uncertainties of climate science and attack the mathematical models used to project future climate changes. The group and its proxies challenged the need for action on global warming, called the phenomenon natural rather than man-made, and even flatly denied it was happening. Maisano insists, how ever, that after the Kyoto Protocol emerged in 1997, the group focused its energies on making economic arguments rather than challenging science.

Even as industry mobilized the forces of skepticism, however, an international scientific collaboration emerged that would change the terms of the debate forever. In 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and government officials inaugurated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific body that would eventually pull together thousands of experts to evaluate the issue, becoming the gold standard of climate science. In the IPCC’s first assessment report, published in 1990, the science remained open to reasonable doubt. But the IPCC’s second report, completed in 1995, concluded that amid purely natural factors shaping the climate, humankind’s distinctive fingerprint was evident. And with the release of the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged: Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.

Even some leading corporations that had previously supported “skepticism” were converted. Major oil companies like Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum, as well as automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, abandoned the Global Climate Coalition, which itself became inactive after 2002.

Yet some forces of denial—most notably ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, of which ExxonMobil is a leading member—remained recalcitrant. In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.” The document stated: “Victory will be achieved when…recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ��conventional wisdom.’” It��s hard to resist a comparison with a famous Brown and Williamson tobacco company memo from the late 1960s, which observed: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

Though ExxonMobil’s Lauren Kerr says she doesn’t know the “status of this reported plan” and an API spokesman says he could “find no evidence” that it was ever implemented, many of the players involved have continued to dispute mainstream climate science with funding from ExxonMobil. According to the memo, Jeffrey Salmon, then executive director of the George C. Marshall Institute, helped develop the plan, as did Steven Milloy, now a FoxNews.com columnist. Other participants included David Rothbard of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, then with Frontiers of Freedom ($612,000). Ebell says the plan was never implemented because “the envisioned funding never got close to being realized.”

Another contributor was ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol, who recently retired but who seems to have plied his trade effectively during George W. Bush’s first term. Less than a month after Bush took office, Randol sent a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The memo denounced the then chairman of the IPCC, Robert Watson, a leading atmospheric scientist, as someone “handpicked by Al Gore” whose real objective was to “get media coverage for his views.” (When the memo’s existence was reported, ExxonMobil took the curious position that Randol did forward it to the CEQ, but neither he nor anyone else at the company wrote it.) “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?” the memo asked. It went on to single out other Clinton administration climate experts, asking whether they had been “removed from their positions of influence.”

It was, in short, an industry hit list of climate scientists attached to the U.S. government. A year later the Bush administration blocked Watson’s reelection to the post of IPCC chairman.

PERHAPS THE MOST SURPRISING aspect of ExxonMobil’s support of the think tanks waging the disinformation campaign is that, given its close ties to the Bush administration (which cited “incomplete” science as justification to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol), it’s hard to see why the company would even need such pseudo-scientific cover. In 1998, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, signed a letter to the Clinton administration challenging its approach to Kyoto. Less than three weeks after Cheney assumed the vice presidency, he met with ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond for a half-hour. Officials of the corporation also met with Cheney’s notorious energy task force.

ExxonMobil’s connections to the current administration go much deeper, filtering down into lower but crucially important tiers of policymaking. For example, the memo forwarded by Randy Randol recommended that Harlan Watson, a Republican staffer with the House Committee on Science, help the United States’ diplomatic efforts regarding climate change. Watson is now the State Department’s “senior climate negotiator.” Similarly, the Bush administration appointed former American Petroleum Institute attorney Philip Cooney—who headed the institute’s “climate team” and opposed the Kyoto Protocol��as chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In June 2003 the New York Times reported that the CEQ had watered down an Environmental Protection Agency report’s discussion of climate change, leading EPA scientists to charge that the document “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus.”

Then there are the sisters Dobriansky. Larisa Dobriansky, currently the deputy assistant secretary for national energy policy at the Department of Energy—in which capacity she’s charged with managing the department’s Office of Climate Change Policy—was previously a lobbyist with the firm Akin Gump, where she worked on climate change for ExxonMobil. Her sister, Paula Dobriansky, currently serves as undersecretary for global affairs in the State Department. In that role, Paula Dobriansky recently headed the U.S. delegation to a United Nations meeting on the Kyoto Protocol in Buenos Aires, where she charged that “science tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.”

Indeed, the rhetoric of scientific uncertainty has been Paula Dobriansky’s stock-in-trade. At a November 2003 panel sponsored by the AEI, she declared, “the extent to which the man-made portion of greenhouse gases is causing temperatures to rise is still unknown, as are the long-term effects of this trend. Predicting what will happen 50 or 100 years in the future is difficult.”

Given Paula Dobriansky’s approach to climate change, it will come as little surprise that memos uncovered by Greenpeace show that in 2001, within months of being confirmed by the Senate, Dobriansky met with ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol and the Global Climate Coalition. For her meeting with the latter group, one of Dobriansky’s prepared talking points was “POTUS [President Bush in Secret Service parlance] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.” The documents also show that Dobriansky met with ExxonMobil executives to discuss climate policy just days after September 11, 2001. A State Department official confirmed that these meetings took place, but adds that Dobriansky “meets with pro-Kyoto groups as well.”

RECENTLY, NAOMI ORESKES, a science historian at the University of California at San Diego, reviewed nearly a thousand scientific papers on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003, and was unable to find one that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to the phenomenon. As Oreskes hastens to add, that doesn’t mean no such studies exist. But given the size of her sample, about 10 percent of the papers published on the topic, she thinks it’s safe to assume that the number is “vanishingly small.”

What do the conservative think tanks do when faced with such an obstacle? For one, they tend to puff up debates far beyond their scientific significance. A case study is the “controversy” over the work of University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann. Drawing upon the work of several independent teams of scientists, including Mann and his colleagues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2001 report asserted that “the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.” This statement was followed by a graph, based on one of the Mann group’s studies, showing relatively modest temperature variations over the past thousand years and a dramatic spike upward in the 20th century. Due to its appearance, this famous graph has been dubbed the “hockey stick.”

During his talk at the AEI, Michael Crichton attacked the “hockey stick,” calling it “sloppy work.” He’s hardly the first to have done so. A whole cottage industry has sprung up to criticize this analysis, much of it linked to ExxonMobil-funded think tanks. At a recent congressional briefing sponsored by the Marshall Institute, Senator Inhofe described Mann’s work as the “primary sci- entific data” on which the IPCC’s 2001 conclusions were based. That is simply incorrect. Mann points out that he’s hardly the only scientist to produce a “hockey stick” graph—other teams of scientists have come up with similar reconstructions of past temperatures. And even if Mann’s work and all of the other studies that served as the basis for the IPCC’s statement on the temperature record are wrong, that would not in any way invalidate the conclusion that humans are currently causing rising temperatures. “There’s a whole independent line of evidence, some of it very basic physics,” explains Mann.

Nevertheless, the ideological allies of ExxonMobil virulently attack Mann’s work, as if discrediting him would somehow put global warming concerns to rest. This idée fixe seems to have begun with Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Both have been “senior scientists” with the Marshall Institute. Soon serves as “science director” to TechCentralStation.com, is an adjunct scholar with Frontiers of Freedom, and wrote (with Baliunas) the Fraser Institute’s pamphlet “Global Warming: A Guide to the Science.” Baliunas, meanwhile, is “enviro-sci host” of TechCentral, and is on science advisory boards of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Annapolis Center for Science-based Public Policy ($427,500 from ExxonMobil), and has given speeches on climate science before the AEI and the Heritage Foundation ($340,000). (Neither Soon nor Baliunas would provide comment for this article.)

In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an article, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, in a small journal called Climate Research. Presenting a review of existing literature rather than new research, the two concluded ��the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” They had, in effect, challenged both Mann and the IPCC, and in so doing presented global warming skeptics with a cause to rally around. Another version of the paper was quickly published with three additional authors: David Legates of the University of Delaware, and longtime skeptics Craig and Sherwood Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Tempe, Arizona. All have ExxonMobil connections: the Idsos received $40,000 from ExxonMobil for their center in the year the study was published, while Legates is an adjunct scholar at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (which got $205,000 between 2000 and 2003).

Calling the paper “a powerful new work of science” that would “shiver the timbers of the adrift Chicken Little crowd,” Senator Inhofe devoted half of a Senate hearing to it, bringing in both Soon and Legates to testify against Mann. The day before, Hans Von Storch, the editor-in-chief of Climate Research—where the Soon and Baliunas paper originally appeared—resigned to protest deficiencies in the review process that led to its publication; two editors soon joined him. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics ��had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.” Meanwhile, Mann and 12 other leading climate scientists wrote a blistering critique of Soon and Baliunas’ paper in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos, noting, among other flaws, that they’d used historic precipitation records to reconstruct past temperatures—an approach Mann told Congress was “fundamentally unsound.”

ON FEBRUARY 16, 2005, 140 nations celebrated the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. In the weeks prior, as the friends of ExxonMobil scrambled to inoculate the Bush administration from the bad press that would inevitably result from America’s failure to sign this international agreement to curb global warming, a congressional briefing was organized. Held in a somber, wood-paneled Senate hearing room, the event could not help but have an air of authority. Like the Crichton talk, however, it was hardly objective. Sponsored by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition, the briefing��s panel of experts featured Myron Ebell, attorney Christopher Horner, and Marshall’s CEO William O��Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition.

But it was the emcee, Senator Inhofe, who best represented the spirit of the event. Stating that Crichton’s novel should be “required reading,” the ruddy-faced senator asked for a show of hands to see who had finished it. He attacked the “hockey stick” graph and damned the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment for having “no footnotes or citations,” as indeed the ACIA “overview” report—designed to be a “plain language synthesis” of the fully referenced scientific report—does not. But never mind, Inhofe had done his own research. He whipped out a 1974 issue of Time magazine and, in mocking tones, read from a 30-year-old article that expressed concerns over cooler global temperatures. In a folksy summation, Inhofe again called the notion that humans are causing global warming “a hoax,” and said that those who believe otherwise are “hysterical people, they love hysteria. We’re dealing with religion.” Having thus dismissed some 2,000 scientists, their data sets and temperature records, and evidence of melting glaciers, shrinking islands, and vanishing habitats as so many hysterics, totems, and myths, Inhofe vowed to stick up for the truth, as he sees it, and “fight the battle out on the Senate floor.”

Seated in the front row of the audience, former ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol looked on approvingly.

....

o'keefe

exxon secrets 2004 org list

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=1">ExxonMobil Corporation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=2">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=3">Accuracy in Academia</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=4">Accuracy in Media</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=5">Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=6">The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=118">US Russia Business Council</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=7">Air Quality Standards Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=8">American Council on Science and Health</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=9">American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=10">ALEC - American Legislative Exchange Council</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=133">American Conservative Union Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=11">American Petroleum Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=105">The Advancement of Sound Science Center, Inc.</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=106">Centre for the New Europe</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=12">American Recreation Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=13">Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=14">Aspen Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=15">Arizona State University Office of Cimatology</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=16">Atlantic Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=17">Atlas Economic Research Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=18">Blue Ribbon Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=19">Capital Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=20">Capital Research Center and Greenwatch</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=132">Public Interest Watch</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=21">Cato Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=134">American Spectator Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=22">Center for Strategic and International Studies</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=23">Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=24">Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=25">CFACT - Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=26">Chemical Education Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=27">Citizens for A Sound Economy and CSE Educational Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=28">Citizens for the Environment and CFE Action Fund</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=29">Clean Water Industry Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=31">Consumer Alert</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=32">Council for Solid Waste Solutions</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=33">Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=34">FREE - Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=35">Frontiers of Freedom Institute and Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=36">George C. Marshall Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=37">George Mason University, Law and Economics Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=38">Global Climate Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=39">Great Plains Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=40">Harvard Center for Risk Analysis</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=41">Heartland Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=42">Heritage Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=43">Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=44">Hudson Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=46">Independent Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=47">Institute for the Study of Earth and Man</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=48">International Republican Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=49">James Madison Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=50">Mackinac Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=51">Manhattan Institute for Policy Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=52">Media Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=54">Mountain States Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=55">National Center for Policy Analysis</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=56">National Environmental Policy Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=57">National Legal Center for the Public Interest</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=58">National Wetlands Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=59">National Center for Public Policy Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=60">Pacific Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=61">Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=62">PERC - Property and Environment Research Center, formerly Political Economy Research Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=63">Reason Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=64">Reason Public Policy Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=65">Science and Environmental Policy Project</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=66">Southeastern Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=67">Center for American and International Law</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=68">Texas Public Policy Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=69">Washington Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=71">New England Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=72">American Coal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=73">Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=74">Center for the New West</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=75">National Wilderness Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=76">American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=77">American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=79">Landmark Legal Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=80">Lexington Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=81">Stanford University GCEP</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=82">ECO or Environmental Conservation Organization</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=83">National Policy Forum</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=84">Statistical Assessment Service (STATS)</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=85">World Climate Report</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=86">Independent Commission on Environmental Education</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=87">American Policy Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=88">Greening Earth Society</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=89">Alexis de Tocqueville Institution</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=90">Americans for Tax Reform</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=91">Association of Concerned Taxpayers</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=92">Center for Security Policy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=93">Cooler Heads Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=94">Defenders of Property Rights</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=95">Junkscience.com</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=96">Seniors Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=97">60/Sixty Plus Association</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=98">Small Business Survival Committee</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=99">Institute for Biospheric Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=100">Center for Environmental Education Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=101">National Council for Environmental Balance</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=102">Institute for Regulatory Science</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=108">International Policy Network - North America</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=107">Fraser Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=104">Alliance for Climate Strategies</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=109">Mercatus Center, George Mason University</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=110">Media Research Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=111">Congress of Racial Equality</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=112">Tech Central Science Foundation or Tech Central Station</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=113">National Black Chamber of Commerce</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=114">Free Enterprise Action Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=115">Institute for Energy Research</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=116">The Justice Foundation (formerly Texas Justice Foundation)</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=117">International Council for Capital Formation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=125">Africa Fighting Malaria</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=119">United for Jobs</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=120">Illinois Policy Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=121">Earthwatch Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=122">Institute of Humane Studies, George Mason University</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=123">The Locke Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=124">Virginia Institute for Public Policy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=126">American Friends of the Institute for Economic Affairs</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=127">Communications Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=128">Free Enterprise Education Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=129">Lindenwood University</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=130">National Association of Neighborhoods</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=131">University of Oklahoma Foundation, Inc.</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=135">Institute for Senior Studies</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=136">Western Fuels</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=137">National Mining Association</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=138">Shook, Hardy and Bacon LLP</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=139">Peabody Energy</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=140">European Enterprise Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=141">Climate Research Journal</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=142">Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=143">DCI Group</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=144">World Affairs Councils of America</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=146">New Zealand Climate Science Coalition </a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=147">International Climate Science Coalition</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=148">Centre for the New Europe</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=149">Science and Public Policy Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=150">Institute for Public Affairs</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=151">Cascade Policy Institute</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=152">Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=153">Affordable Power Alliance</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=154">Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=155">Doctors for Disaster Preparedness</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=156">Business Civic Leadership Center</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=157">Committee For Economic Development</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=158">The Tax Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=159">Wyoming Heritage Foundation</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=160">Institute For Liberty</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=161">Consumers Alliance for Global Prosperity</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=162">Initiative for Public Policy Analysis</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=163">Australian Climate Science Coalition </a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=164">American Energy Freedom Center </a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=165">TSAugust</a>

<a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=166">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>

===

GANGS OF AMERICA

stockholder:

Whatever you have to say,” cuts in the Chairman, “the matter has

already been decided in the negative by proxies received prior to this

meeting. You have one minute forty seconds.”

“Mr. Chairman, you have the power to restrict this debate, but your

authority is not legitimate. I represent twenty thousand nuns and clergy

who have an ownership stake in this company. Their pensions depend

on its financial results, but at the same time they wish to see financial

performance balanced against other factors including the urgent need to

protect the environment and to safeguard human rights..”

“You have 55 seconds remaining.”

258

Speaker after speaker approaches the microphones to make statements

on behalf of a variety of resolutions to reform the company. One

asks for a policy forbidding discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Another proposes that Exxon Mobil alter its stance on global warming.

Yet another opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The most startling of the proposals requests that Exxon Mobil end

its involvement in the Indonesian province of Aceh, where the company

maintains a close relationship with military forces that have been ruthlessly

suppressing a local separatist movement. According to a lawsuit

filed in federal court by the International Labor Rights Fund, Exxon

Mobil provided buildings used by the Indonesian military to torture local

activists, and its bulldozers dug the mass graves used to bury the

victims. There will be no real debate on any of these matters. The atmosphere

is oppressive, even intimidating. Security guards stand ready

to forcibly eject from the hall any speaker who deliberately exceeds the

meager time limits.

</div>

</div></div>

EXXON MOBIL

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