By Andy May
h/t Willie Soon
Steve Milloy is the publisher of junkscience.com and trained as a lawyer and biostatistician. He was “lauded” as one of the top ten “climate deniers” by George Monbiot at the Guardian. Milloy has filed a shareholder proposal with Exxon-Mobil insisting that they account for their “greenwashing” activities that are not required by law. He defines greenwashing as expenditures that are supposed to be environment-related but are actually undertaken to improve the company’s public image. These insincere green activities waste shareholder money, deceive shareholders and the public.
Exxon Mobil submitted a request to the SEC to exclude Milloy’s proposal from the shareholder meeting, scheduled for May 27, 2020. The SEC ruled in Milloy’s favor as you can see in Figure 1.
Figure 1. SEC summary of their decision, they turned down Exxon Mobil’s request to exclude Milloy’s proposal. Source: SEC.
Exxon-Mobil management has long been divided on the risks of climate change, as I have written here. But, the risks of human-caused climate change have been investigated by thousands of researchers, worldwide, since 1979 and they have uncovered nothing significant. The only solid impacts of human-caused global warming or climate change uncovered are positive, as seen here.
Greenwashing by Exxon-Mobil, sends the wrong signal to the public and the environmentalists. They use it as a club to beat the fossil fuel industry, saying “See climate denier, even the largest private fossil-fuel producer agrees with us!” As a long-time Exxon-Mobil shareholder and a past Exxon employee, I will vote with Milloy and against Exxon-Mobil in May. Exxon-Mobil should stand up for itself and what is right.
Corporate Governance is oligarchic, not democratic.
The big shareholders have the biggest interest and so the biggest say. One share per vote, not one mind per vote.
This vote will be determined by the pension funds and Wall St blue chip banks. None of whom care about the climate or about moral integrity but they do care about keeping their heads down while they make money.
Exxon must NEVER be bailed out. They should be allowed to fail if it ever came to that.
Tesla handouts must stop & Tesla must never be bailed out. The money losing con that is Tesla must be allowed to fail.
Please document the “handouts” and direct Government subsides to Tesla. I’ve seen plenty of claims, but nothing to back them up so far.
Do your own research, or is that too hard?
https://electrek.co/2020/02/11/tesla-subsidies-giga-berlin-factory/
https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/8/10937076/tesla-gigafactory-battery-factory-nevada-tax-deal-elon-musk
https://fortune.com/2020/01/07/elon-musk-tesla-gigafactory-shanghai-china-ceremony/
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4331924-tesla-looking-for-subsidies
There you go, a few minutes “Googling”
Really? Are you blind or just fond of confirmation bias?
Paul Penrose, You are obviously not widely read.
“Tesla’s flagship automobile, the Model S, would not only fail to make money in a free market, it would likely bankrupt any company that tried. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Tesla’s “cars themselves aren’t making the company any money.” A Model S with a typical options package sells for more than $100,000, but that is literally tens of thousands of dollars less than it costs to manufacture and sell.
How, then, does Tesla make its money?
The direct subsidies for purchasers, to encourage them to buy “clean-energy” vehicles, are fairly well-known: a $7,500 federal tax credit and a wide variety of state-level incentive programs. (Tesla has them all listed conveniently here.)
Less well-known are the hidden subsidies that flow directly to Tesla, thanks to “zero-emission vehicle” (ZEV) credits. ZEV credits are a mandate dreamed up by the bureaucrats at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which requires manufacturers to build and dealers to sell an arbitrary number of “zero-emission” vehicles each year. (Note that these vehicles are actually “zero-emission” only in the unlikely event that the electricity used by the car comes from a zero-emission source — which, of course, would also be heavily subsidized.)
Tesla’s Model S generates four credits per unit sold. This means the company can sell $20,000 in ZEV credits to other manufacturers for each Model S sold — a cost borne by purchasers of other cars.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/01/tesla-and-its-subsidies-phil-kerpen/
You’re right – in a way. The Government has no money. We, the People, including our companies, are taxed. Frequently, Government agents are under the impression that this is really their money, and they are generous in allowing us to keep a portion of our earnings.
It is the money they take from us that pays the subsidies to companies like Tesla. The Government got nothing in return when Tesla sold a car. This is unlike SpaceX, who provided launch services for the money they received from the Government.
Call it what you will – the majority of people who contributed to Tesla so that the rich could have a fairly unique toy to show off or demonstrate their “awokeness” – received nothing in return.
How, then, does Tesla make its money?
With the exception of a handful of quarters (and those mainly due to accounting gimmicks) , it doesn’t. Every year of it’s existence has seen a net loss. every single year.
Here is what John points to, I think. Look at all of the losses, especially as car sales increased. And then look at where they did a tad better by selling carbon credits.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/05/elon-musk-says-dont-worry-about-teslas-burn-rate-he-might-be-right/
Mandates to buy certain amounts of ‘X’ are indirect handouts. Tax rebates on electric cars is a subsidy. Rebates appear to give money back to the buyer but actually allow companies to charge (and pocket) that much more.
Okay, Tesla handouts:
a) They were given a sweetheart deal on the NUMMI building in Fremont that no one else wanted at the time. I felt at the time and feel now that it was probably a net negative for them cost-wise to build in California, but there’s no question it’s dumped a bunch of money into the Bay Area economy.
b) EVs get three years of ‘free at last, free at last, oh Lord, free at last’ single-occupant carpool-lane access. In no way Tesla-specific. Worth more to many Tesla buyers than any tax incentives. “Ask me for anything, gentlemen, but TIME” – Napoleon to his generals.
c) They got to book huge chunks of revenue from selling zero-emissions credits to other automakers for years. Once again, not Tesla-specific.
d) Various tax credits and incentives. Valuable, perhaps, but percentage-wise accrues more highly to the buyers of cheaper EVs.
Don’t get me wrong, I own 2000HP of internal combustion. But my wife’s new Model 3 (the 3-second 0-60 model) is incredible fun, American-built, and $20K cheaper than an equivalently-fast-in-daily-use BMW M3 (even if the M3 has better seats).
They’ve also sold a couple billion bucks worth of carbon offsets to GM, from what I hear.
Why shouldn’t those who have the most to lose have the most say in how a company is run?
Totally agree.
I guess it doesn’t really matter how the shareholdes vote. The proposal brings the subject up to management, something they cannot now “deny” knowing when they, individually, get sued for wasting shareholders money. This waste has been going on for years. Did the shareholders ever vote to waste the profits for this past geenwashing? If not, the management is responsible for the waste and should be held to account for their decisions. Individual repayment of costs incured should now be adjudicated, especially for any involved politically with warmist organizations. Anyone using EXXON shareholder funds to further their personal political opinions needs to be FIRED. TRUMP!, You are fired!
And nothing wrong with making money. That’s how we “keep score” and award those who are doing things that are beneficial.
Corporate Governance. I love that. I can’t wait to see the look on socialists’ faces when they realize they’re puppets of capitalist technocrats.
Some of this from 100 years ago should sound familiar. Many of the founding principles are part of the modern Left.
—–
“We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state.”
“Do not believe, even for a moment, that by stripping me of my membership card you do the same to my Socialist beliefs, nor that you would restrain me of continuing to work in favor of Socialism and of the Revolution.”
“Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.”
“The Fascist State directs and controls the entrepreneurs…. If anything fails to work properly, the State intervenes. The capitalists will go on doing what they are told, down to the very end. They have no option and cannot put up any fight. Capital is not God; it is only a means to an end.”
“Fascism establishes the real equality of individuals before the nation… the object of the regime in the economic field is to ensure higher social justice for the whole of the Italian people…
What does social justice mean? It means work guaranteed, fair wages, decent homes, it means the possibility of continuous evolution and improvement. Nor is this enough. It means that the workers must enter more and more intimately into the productive process and share its necessary discipline…
As the past century was the century of capitalist power, the twentieth century is the century of power and glory of labour.”
“I declare that henceforth capital and labor shall have equal rights and duties as brothers in the fascist family.”
― Benito Mussolini
“The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital, and “rigidly secular” schools. Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run.”
― Thomas Sowell
Darn it Hoser, you got me.
I thought I was reading a speech from Il Duce on the Hudson, but it wasn’t cuomo after all.
M Courtney you are misinformed. Read about the RICO action filed by Leo Goldstein in the recent past against numerous pension funds and individuals and announced on these pages:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/12/exclusive-climate-skeptic-files-sweeping-rico-lawsuit-against-most-all-climate-related-ngos-and-some-individuals/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/06/rico-lawsuit-against-climate-action-network-canintl-moves-forward/
Recently Blackrock announced significant investment in Renewables.
All of that accommodation to the greenies was done by Rex Tillerson, as far as I can tell. I don’t think Lee Raymond would have had anything to do with that kind of crap. Tillerson was also national President of the Boy Scouts of America for a couple of years and got them to allow gay Scoutmasters, a really serious mistake.
The lawyers are salivating at the thought of redistributing the Catholic Church for normalizing pedophile trans/homosexual priests to prey upon their children. The BSA is next.
In my opinion if the moonbat does not like you then you are good in my book. Steve Milloy is doing good work to promote good science.
I went to junkscience.com and note that Steve covered an important story that was also covered here, to wit the reproducibility crisis. WUWT
The government is a major supplier of research grants. It’s bad enough that most published research findings are false and are, therefore, a waste of public money. It’s criminal, literally, that a large number of those papers are based on zero data and are withdrawn if data is requested. Maybe, if Steve needs a project, he could get a bunch of scientists sent to jail. It looks like he has the skills and expertise.
We have the occasional win but they’re too few and far apart. WUWT
commieBob
We give lip service to the “reproducibility crisis” but many here on WUWT are willing to forge ahead, without high-quality double-blind studies that can be replicated, on the question of the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine. We complain about alarmists not adhering to high standards demanded by science, but many advocate forgetting about that when it comes to something that might, or might not, save lives. It is hypocrisy!
Clyde Spencer
I believe there was a study into hydroxychloroquine completed in France last week which had 100% success.
Don’t ask me the details, I cant help, but might be interesting for those with the skills to interrogate it.
One detail of the study was that the patients who were treated using the malaria drug in combination with an antibiotic were cleared of the Wuhan virus in five days .
5 days cleared me too (of Covid 19).
Quercetin, Zn (w/ Ca, Mg combo), C, D3, CoQ10 and 2 to 4 doses of powdered juiced fruits and veggies, hydration and sleep. The gurgling in my lungs along with aches, fever and chills made for difficult to sleep.
I do this regimen because I have suffered with bronchitis and asthma symptoms my entire life and now I can afford mega nutrition which may be a waste, but I think it’s make other positive changes so I “believe” it works.
PS it makes sense that the ionophoric action of CoQ10 and Quercetin with Zn may have had similar therapeutic affect as the France study you refer to. It’s been long known that Viruses and bacteria hate Zn. People know that this stuff works in nutrition circles, (vs some scientific and some medical circles) andI have learned a lot by all of the news of late. Many sites such as WebMD and others have done some limited studies that corroborate some of this which I put forward. Maybe I have just gained some confirmation bias… since it’s just so hard to “know.”
Other areas I’ve studied have to do with astaxanthin and fish oil to mimic without symptoms, statin drugs and blood thinners. And there are mostly only positive benefits vs taking the drugs! Very fascinating stuff.
Mario, I heard this morning that apparently the French government is so impressed with the results of the test that they are now authorizing general use by the public.
Tom: Let’s be hopeful that it works and we get some data!! For me, the whole ionophore explanation, along with natural ways to create the same mechanism “Quercetin….” makes me feel good about the nutrients I am getting…
Mario
Link to study:
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf
You have a drowning man and a snake. You can lower the snake to save the man but the snake might be poisonous.
Do you test the snake to see if is poisonous or grab the snake by the tail and lower it anyways.
The man is going to die. You have nothing to lose by lowering a potentially poisonous snake.
I assume you are using the snake as a rope for lack of rope. so just kill the snake (chop it’s head off or bash it’s brains in with a rock) and then lower the snake corpse instead. 😉
hydroxychloroquine is a known product that is known to be effective against certain viral diseases with known side effects (in other words it’s been well studied already so the risks of using it are well understood). The only unknown is how effective it is against this particular virus. Early studies against this virus show promise. When you are faced with a deadly virus and have nothing else to combat it, you have nothing to lose with trying a known product that has shown some promise in combatting the disease in order to possibly save lives while waiting for the more “rigorous” studies to be completed. No one is saying don’t “do those rigorous studies”, they’re saying we’re dying out here and we’re willing to try anything available to save lives that otherwise would be lost waiting for those more rigorous studies to be completed.
If you or one of your loved ones was deathly ill from this virus would you say no thanks, I don’t want to try that hydroxychloroquine because the “reproducibility” study hasn’t been completed yet, so I’d rather I or my loved one just die from the virus or would you say: yes, I’ll give it a try, what do I have to lose. I don’t know about you, but my response would definitely be the later.
The greens are like the protection racket mafia. Pay up and we might go easy on you. But, they never go easy, they just squeeze harder.
Not green as in life or green as in naive, but Green as in Green blight and green as in redistributive change. They are one of diverse rackets in this notably fascist enterprise, a sociapolitical alliance to normalize capital and control sharing between empathetic government sects and for-profit and non-profit private sector special and peculiar interests.
As Kipling said, “once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane.”
I believe the northern Germanic tribe that settled Denmark also settled southern Sweden. So by ethnicity, Greta is also a Dane.
Kipling was obviously prescient.
My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:—
“The Saxon is not like us Normans, His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, “This isn’t fair dealings,” my son, leave the Saxon alone.
“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears,
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.
“But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they’re saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ’em out if it takes you all day.
“They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark,
It’s the sport not the rabbits they ‘re after (we ‘ve plenty of game in the park).
Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.
“Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking instead of ‘you fellows’ and ‘I.’
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ’em a lie!”
Rudyard Kipling
When will we ever learn?
Any degree of appeasement will never satisfy zealots of the classic religious genre, nor the more contemporary climate genre.
Read Rudyard Kipling’s ” Danegeld” on that
“Once you pay up the Danegeld
You never get rid of the Dane”
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_danegeld.htm
It always seems strange that woke companies and individuals rant about “climate change” yet cannot define what it is nor what to do about it. Science, that is the observance of facts rather than computer models, shows that the small degree of warming so far has been beneficial. History also points to great growth and advancement during previous warm periods even when those exceeded the present temperatures by a few degrees. I cannot understand the stupidity of those who see a positive in a negative light. I also cannot fathom the logic of those who panic at a degree change caused by their reckoning, no facts of course, by CO2 emissions yet steadfastly refuse to see the answer is nuclear. To my mind a greater threat exists and that is an orchestrated attack on Western culture and capitalism. Who is responsible can most often be determined by finding who has the most to gain. The answer is socialism or communism, the latter of which was thought to be destroyed in 1989. We are in another cold war but most do not recognise it nor do they understand the consequences of losing.
lways seems strange that woke companies and individuals rant about “climate change” yet cannot define what it is nor what to do about it. Science, that is the observance of facts rather than computer models, shows that the small degree of warming so far has been beneficial. History also points to great growth and advancement during previous warm periods even when those exceeded the present temperatures by a few degrees. I cannot understand the stupidity of those who see a positive in a negative light. I also cannot fathom the logic of those who panic at a degree change caused by their reckoning, no facts of course, by CO2 emissions yet steadfastly refuse to see the answer is nuclear. To my mind a greater threat exists and that is an orchestrated attack on Western culture and capitalism. Who is responsible can most often be determined by finding who has the most to gain. The answer is socialism or communism, the latter of which was thought to be destroyed in 1989. We are in another cold war but most do not recognise it nor do they understand the consequences of losing.
Beautiful! First of all, Exxon-Mobil is a primary descendant of Standard Oil — the Biggest Oil Rockefeller company that made the family super rich. And Biggest Oil Rockefellers are the originators of the Climate Change scam. So, like the lies of the Warming Alarmists, the greenwashing lies of the Rockefellers’ evil spawn is not surprising.
Second, ALL publicly-traded corporations are evil by the very nature of their existence — as slaves of the shareholders. They have a fiduciary duty to rake in profits by any means possible, including breaking the law, endangering lives, conspiracy to destroy lives and more. This is how we get the “Medical Industry” putting patients at a distant 5th place on their list of priorities, so Disease Maintenance is their standard operating basis, instead of Health Maintenance. Profits come from patients who suffer the longest.
Third, ALL publicly-traded corporations are Leftist — promoting BIG government instead of individual rights. In fact, BIG corporations hate Free Market Capitalism, and love Leftist Capitalism.
Those on the Right need to wake up to these facts and give Leftists credit for their evil spawn — Leftist Capitalism — pure Centralized Control, egregiously evil, collectivist in intent and anti-individual.
Rod Martin, I agree, except I don’t believe companies break the law very often, and when they do they get caught, and would add: “To thine own self be true.” (Polonius in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3). Exxon-Mobil is a capitalist business, made to make money for its shareholders. Do it legally, but don’t pretend to be anything different.
Fiduciary duty does not including breaking the law.
“All publicly traded corporations are evil….including breaking the law, endangering….”
Wow, what kind of horse hockey outfits have you worked for ?….most corporations are very cognizant of following the law, and follow it to the very best of their efforts. And after a certain size they simply become a payroll tax and dividend tax collection department for the government anyway. At that point, their worst characteristic is usually wanting more rules to eliminate competition so they can send even more payroll and dividend tax to the government, who is complicit in making those additional regulations to collect more tax….and so on…
These big corporations, spend a lot of money in getting the laws made, to suit them.
There is an interesting trend the green/left come up with the idea of using law tactics then to only have the right use the same laws as they set a precedent
If you can’t get money by legislation, SUE. It’s the American way–steal from the producers and give to your crony buds. Civil suit lawyers are the lowest form of life on earth. And the most evil.
From the article: “Milloy has filed a shareholder proposal with Exxon-Mobil insisting that they account for their “greenwashing” activities that are not required by law. He defines greenwashing as expenditures that are supposed to be environment-related but are actually undertaken to improve the company’s public image. These insincere green activities waste shareholder money, deceive shareholders and the public.”
I see this type of tv commercial from one oil company or another on televison just about every day. It’s pathetic to watch them pander to the alarmists.
Thanks for the news.
I prefer my XOM without the green salsa. If you are going to serve it with salsa, that should be listed on the menu.
I see the same kind of blatant virtue-signalling from the Board of Directors of the major electric utility I worked for. Some of the board members have NO training in the industry and even no science experience — they’re purely political/affirmative-action choices. And these are many of the people guiding the company.
Andy,
I went to your fine summary article you linked to here, https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/did-exxon-lie-about-the-dangers-of-climate-change-or-are-they-being-silenced-through-intimidation/ and I notice that many of the XOM doc’s you link to are no longer available. Are there new links somewhere, or do you have these doc’s that you can share somehow?
rms, Sorry about that. But sometimes stuff is removed from the Internet or moved to another address. I had a lot of stuff on my hard drive from when I wrote the post in 2016. So, I uploaded it and the links to my files can be found here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/03/23/key-documents-in-the-exxon-mobil-lawsuit-by-state-attorneys-general/