Dear Exxon Shareholders…

The good news, the bad news, the question, and the test

Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
2 min readJun 28, 2019

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If it helps for Exxon shareholders to know, Exxon isn’t doing squat yet in Congress to help address climate change. And action in Congress is key to success. Here’s the story:

The good news — Exxon claims to support a carbon price and has given $1 million to a not-yet-operational 501c3 to support Republicans who might do something on climate.

The bad news — if Exxon supports such Republicans, it will be against a far greater war armada of political muscle, phony science and propaganda groups that Exxon created, funded or infiltrated to oppose climate legislation, still operating full blast.

The question — is Exxon playing “green PR” games while quietly maintaining the front groups that have crushed climate progress since Citizens United, and is this just more ExxonLies? Or is Exxon putting a serious toe in the water to prepare for a real switch?

The test — one test of sincerity will be whether the two worst climate obstructors, NAM and Chamber, cease their denial and obstruction; and a related test will be whether Exxon, NAM, Chamber and rest of fossil fuel come clean on the secret funding relationships that pushed NAM and Chamber to become the two worst obstructors.

Read more here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-20/large-exxon-shareholder-starts-divesting-over-climate-change

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