What a Difference a Day Makes: Exxon Goes Positive and Transparent

Posted on | January 14, 2007 | Comments Off on What a Difference a Day Makes: Exxon Goes Positive and Transparent

Over the past decade Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded multinational has seldom been on the same page as Ceres, an environmentally sensitive investor coalition. In fact, when Ceres rated oil companies on their performance in support of responsibly addressing the issues of global warming, BP got 90 and Royal Dutch Shell got 79. Exxon? It flunked with a 35. This not only reflected Exxon’s passive resistance in acknowledging a growing body of evidence that our world is in trouble. It also noted more aggressive and often non-transparent support of groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) that has been committed to limited government regulation and challenging the science of global warming.

But now Exxon has flipped. VP of Public Affairs for Exxon, Ken Cohen, recently told The Wall Street Journal, "We know enough now — or, society knows enough now — that the risk is serious and action should be taken."

While that’s not exactly a mea culpa or public apology, Exxon did also discontinue the services of CEI (at least in this regard) and 5 or 6 other like firms who the company will not disclose, but who the public will be able to identify this spring on Exxon’s annual list of donations.

Having others speak for you, and the purposeful obfuscation of science, has been a remarkably common and successful strategy in both public and private organizations of late. But in an age of consumer engagement and growing populism, where globalization and the Internet expose strategies and contradictory positions of multi-nationals forced to adjust messages and tactics to multiple cultures simultaneously, it’s increasingly difficult to support policies that you know to be based on artifactual data. While an Exxon could resist global warming with the support of the U.S. Administration here, it still had to comply with almost every other nation around the world that had signed on to Kyoto and were making earnest attempts to comply.

Ceres climate expert Andrew Logan doesn’t appear to be holding grudges. He says, "The fact that Exxon is trying to debate solutions, instead of whether climate change even exists, represents an important shift … Given how large and influential Exxon is and that they are basically the last big industry climate skeptic standing, even small moves can have a very big impact."

And it is significant that 20 of the largest companies, whose representatives probably met in secrecy with Vice President Cheney to chart our nation’s energy policy and independence of Kyoto just 6 years ago, are now meeting quite publicly under the auspices of Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C., think tank. They promise a report in the fall. Let us hope that this time they will weigh our country’s immediate and long-term needs equally with their own short-term profitability.