Activists plan to make a public stand at Exxon’s annual
shareholder meeting May 25, where several resolutions intended to force
the company into acknowledging the climate threat will come to a vote. |
Getty
On Nov. 3, ExxonMobil dispatched its top lobbyists to Capitol Hill on
an urgent mission — tamping down an escalating campaign aimed at making
the country’s largest oil company pay a legal and political price for
its role in warming the planet. The meeting marked a striking shift in Exxon’s handling of the
controversy. The notion of holding oil companies responsible for global
warming, in the same way tobacco companies had to pay billions of
dollars in damages over the health effects of cigarettes, had long been
seen as a quixotic quest led by scruffy, oil-hating extremists. But
POLITICO’s interviews with dozens of activists, industry officials and
lawmakers suggest that support for a legal crusade against Exxon is
growing far beyond the political fringe — and now poses the biggest
existential threat the company has faced in decades. Just
five days before the meeting on Capitol Hill, Democratic presidential
front-runner Hillary Clinton had urged the Justice Department to
investigate whether the petroleum giant spent decades deceiving the
public about the threat of climate change. State attorneys general had
Exxon in their sights as well, preparing to issue subpoenas that would
eventually rope in virtually all of Washington’s conservative policy
apparatus. A four-year effort by green activists, scientists and lawyers
to turn Big Oil’s biggest player into the poster child for climate
change — deliberately patterned after the successful campaign to take
down tobacco — was shaking the descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil empire to its core. MORE
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