A major Exxon shareholder told his fellow shareholders Wednesday the company is not pushing back forcefully enough against the demands of climate activists, and that the company management’s support for the Paris climate deal will eventually bankrupt the company.
Steve Milloy, a long-time Exxon shareholder and public climate skeptic told investors they should not only be wary of activists who target the company but also of top brass inside the company. He argued that the oil producer is actively undercutting its own business models.
“On one side are anti-capitalist climate activists — some are here pretending to be bona fide shareholders,” Milloy told his fellow shareholders Wednesday at Exxon’s annual shareholder meeting.
“Their goal is to hijack Exxon’s resources and influence to advance their anti-capitalist, anti-America political agenda,” he added. “They want to destroy Exxon and the value of our stock.”
Milloy, who is founded and operates climate skeptic website junkscience.com, focused the bulk of his ire on executives at the giant oil producers, most of whom he argued are hell-bent on staying wed to the “economically suicidal Paris hoax.”
“Exxon management supports a carbon tax – a policy designed to slash oil and gas use,” he added. “And management’s refusal to fight has encouraged activists to get going a criminal investigation of our company by state attorneys general.”
Milloy was referring to a nearly year-long Democrat-lead investigation into the oil company’s climate record. Attorneys general from across the country began their pursuit last year to determine whether Exxon hid from the public more than four decade’s worth of climate data.
The company’s shareholders and executives are also discussing a proposal forcing Exxon to measure how Obama-era regulations could impact the value of the company’s oil assets. The oil producer opposes the measure.
Some analysts believe the measure, if passed, could indicate the full weight and force powerful investors and money managers that are concerned about climate change have on energy companies.
Milloy, for his part, told The Daily Caller News Foundation earlier this month that Exxon investors and others should take heed of what happened to the coal industry before it throws its lot in with climate activists.
“The threat would have been hypothetical no more than five years ago,” he said, “but the threat is real now. Shareholders get zeroed out because of all of this global warming hysteria.”
He submitted a resolution in April through a mutual fund he called the Free Enterprise Action Fund, which requests Exxon change its bylaws blocking stockholders from filing resolutions.
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