Exxon "Chose to Mislead": Granddaughter of Former Exxon Climate Scientist

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Anna Kalinsky, the granddaughter of former Exxon climate scientist James Black, has berated the company for bankrolling climate change denial despite her grandfather’s attempts toย informย the companyย of the risks of burning fossil fuels for the globalย climate.

โ€œIn 1977 my grandfather was a senior scientist at Exxon. He warned Exxon executives that the world was just a few years away from needing to rethink our energy strategy to prevent destructive climate change,โ€ Kalinskyย says.

โ€œInstead, Exxon chose to mislead people about the risks of climate change โ€“ and continues to mislead people today. The company says they value their scientists and all the work they do, but thatโ€™s pretty hard to believe when they continue to fund organizations โ€“ both publicly and anonymously โ€“ that spread misinformation about theย science.โ€

Kalinsky’s comments came during a call with media prior toย ExxonMobil’s May 25 Annual General Meeting in Dallas, Texas, where shareholders will vote on a number of resolutions pertaining to climateย change.ย 

Kalinskyย is slated to address ExxonMobil’s executives and speak about her grandfather’s scientific findings which were featured in a September investigative article byย InsideClimateย News.

As Kalinsky alluded to,ย Exxonย spent $31 million dollarsย funding the climate change denial machine between 1998 and 2014 โ€”ย by conservativeย estimates.ย 

Among other climate-denying activity, Exxon still funds the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),ย a โ€œcorporate bill millโ€ that has long denied the reality of human-caused climate change. ALEC has been singled out by ClimateTruth.org, which isย calling on Exxon to drop its dues-paying membership with theย organization.ย 

Back in 1978, almost four decades ago, Black made ominous warnings about the potential perils of climate change to come if humanity did not stem fossil fuel usageย and reverseย course.

โ€œIn the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,โ€ Black told Exxon higher-ups, according to InsideClimate News’ reporting, in a presentation titled โ€œThe Greenhouse Effect.โ€ โ€œPresent thinking holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might becomeย critical.โ€

Remarking that Black was a โ€œman of science,โ€ Kalinsky offered her thoughts on how Black may feel today, were he still alive, about the direction Exxon took and the โ€œroad not takenโ€ once it made scientific discoveries about climateย change.

โ€œHe told my mother that a company is in trouble when it falls into the hands of the accountants,โ€ Kalinsky stated. โ€œI don’t think he’d be proud of the company he’d worked so hardย for.โ€

25 Years: Nixing Shareholder Climateย Resolutions

While best known these days for its โ€œExxon Knewโ€ investigation, InsideClimate News also published an e-bookย and an article as part of its โ€œClimate Accountability Projectโ€ in June 2015 on ExxonMobil’s intransigence pertaining to shareholder resolutions at its Annual General Meetings. According to their reporting, the types of resolutions slated for votes at the AGM in Dallasย routinely get shotย down.

Among the climate change-orientedย resolutions the company’s top brass has urged its shareholders to vote against:

– Add a member to the board of directors with environmentalย expertise.

– Increase capital distributions to shareholders instead of investing in development of oil reserves that may never beย exploited.

– Change the company’s method of accounting to better position Exxon to adapt to adapt to climate change by exploring non-fossilย resources.

– Disclose funding of lobbyists and organizations dedicated to influencing climateย policy.

– Acknowledge the moral imperative to limit global average temperature increases to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and pledge to support the goal of limiting warming to less than 2ย degrees.

Were shareholders to pass any of these resolutions, it would literally be unprecedented in the company’s history, as the โ€œresolutions rarely get the support of more than a few percent of a company’s stock,โ€ according to InsideClimate News. But with increased pressure and public scrutiny on the company and the fossil fuel sector at-large, some climate activists see Exxon’s Annual General Meeting as a tipping point in theย climate accountabilityย sphere.ย 

โ€œThis yearโ€™s shareholder meeting should be a moment of reckoning for Exxon. The company is facing mounting, well-deserved pressure due to its woefully out-of-touch approach to climate change,โ€ said Naomi Ages, Climate Liability Project Lead at Greenpeace USA. โ€œExxon is being held to account for the years it denied any contribution to runaway climate change by state Attorneys General, regulators, and now even its majorย shareholders.โ€

DeSmog will monitorย the votes on the resolutions and provide live updates as they receiveย votes.

Update: Mother Writes, Daughterย Speaks

Anna Kalinsky spoke both at and outside of Exxon’s Annual General Meeting, while her mother Claudia Black-Kalinskyย wrote an op-edย for The Guardian echoing the statements her daughter Anna made in the May 23 press call. Claudia Black-Kalinsky wrote theย following:

When my father first briefed Exxonโ€™s executives about climate change, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at 330 parts per million. Now it is 20% higher and Nasa scientists are telling us the first few months of 2016 are so warm weโ€™re almost certain to set another global heat record thisย year.

What would the world be like today if Exxon executives had listened to my father? If Exxon had led the industry in confronting climate change instead of funding public relations campaigns to disprove its existence? Perhaps sea levels would not be rising as quickly. Perhaps the fires burning across Alberta would not be as destructive. Perhaps we would already be transitioning to cleaner fuels and energyย sources.

The daughter, Anna Kalinsky, delivered a petition to ExxonMobil on behalf of 35,000 signatories calling for the company to drop its membership in ALEC.

Update Two: The Guardian Denied Pressย Pass

The Guardian, another outlet which has published cuttiing-edge reporting on what Exxon knew and when it knew it with regards to climate change, was denied a press pass by ExxonMobil for the Annual Generalย Meeting.ย 

โ€œWe are denying your request [to attend Wednesdayโ€™s meeting] because of the Guardianโ€™s lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its partnership with anti-oil and gas activists and its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers,โ€ Alan Jeffers, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, told The Guardian.

Nils Pratley, The Guardian’s financial editor, did not take to the decisionย lightly.

โ€œExxonโ€ฆseems determined to resist, just as it refuses to contemplate the possibility that some of its shareholders may sympathise with the Guardianโ€™s reporting and wish to read a firsthand account of the meeting,โ€ he wrote. โ€œGrowย up.โ€

Update Three: Tillerson Addresses ALEC

At the Annual General Meeting, Tillerson responded to a question about ExxonMobil’s membership in ALEC. He said the company, despite public pressure, has no intention to leave theย organization.ย 

ALEC is a collective of state โ€œlegislatures and legislators, over 400 members and most of the most productive legislation in this country is passed at state levels,โ€ saidย Tillerson.

โ€œWe have found our engagement with them to be very productive in a number of broad areas, whether its tax policy, other regulatory areas including educationย reform and that’s why we remain engaged with them. We find them to be a highly competent, very thoughtful policy organization. Whether we agree with the positions they ultimately take or not, we find the engagement to be very useful to our understanding of these issues and we intend toย continue.โ€

Tillerson also referred to its ALEC membership as a free speech issue, akin to a fight for the heart and soul of the Firstย Amendment.

โ€œThe only way I know how to respond is to tell you that we will never withdraw our support for people to address their free speech opinions on any free speech matter whatsoever,โ€ Tillerson stated, with the crowd responding with a round of applause. โ€œAnd the fact that people have different opinions on climate change, they have every right to their opinion [and] whether we agree with it or not I will support their right to sayย so.โ€

Update Four: All Climate Resolutions Nixed Butย One

By overwhelming majorities, all but one of the climate-oriented resolutions proposed by shareholders were nixed.

Among them, shareholders voted against one that called for the company to limit global warming to 2-degrees Celsius, with 18-percent voting for it and 82-percent against it. Further,ย 79-percent of shareholders voted against aย resolution calling for the company to insert a climate expert on itsย Board.

One of the 11 proposed did pass, though, which allows minority shareholders to appointย someone to a seat on ExxonMobil’s Board. As Reuters detailed, this in effect means that a โ€œclimate activist could eventually become a director at the oilย giant.โ€

But that aside, climate activist groups like 350.org reacted with dismay in the aftermath of the annualย meeting.ย 

โ€œThe recommendation by Exxonโ€™s board to outright reject [nearly] every single climate resolution from shareholders sends an incontestable signal to investors: itโ€™s due time to divest from Exxonโ€™s deception,โ€ said May Boeve, Executive Director of 350.org, in a press release. โ€œThe recommended rejection of shareholderโ€™s climate resolutions today proved that the companyโ€™s executives are set on prioritizing profit and greed over our climate andย communities.โ€

Photo Credit:ย Johnnyย Silvercloud

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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