https://www.cfact.org/2021/05/22/cfact-launches-counterpunch-to-big-business-leftward-lurch/
By Adam Houser
For decades, big corporations were the liberals’ favorite boogeymen. They were vilified in the media, by Hollywood, and by liberal politicians.
How the times have changed!
Nowadays, corporate America can’t seem to run toward leftist policies fast enough. If you turn on the television or watch any YouTube video, chances are you’ll run into some corporate ad with a liberal twist.
What’s worse, is that your stock portfolio is most likely supporting this new mission – whether you like it or not.
Of course, this was the Left’s plan all along. Progressive investment groups have strategically bought significant shares of prominent companies in order to pressure them into embracing radical Leftist shareholder resolutions.
Their strategy, dare we say, is beginning to pay off in huge dividends.
No industry seems to be immune. This is most evident with large fossil fuel companies; companies that just a few years ago would have little to nothing in common with eco-extremist ideology.
Once vilified as polluters of the Earth, fossil fuel companies are now attempting to attain new titles: climate change champions!
Pathetic. They should know the Greens will never let that happen.
Of particular note is fossil fuel company ConocoPhillips, which proudly positions itself as a so-called leader on climate change.
During ConocoPhillips annual shareholders meeting, Chairman & CEO Ryan Lance declared: “We made history in October 2020 by becoming the first U.S. oil and gas company to adopt a Paris-aligned climate risk strategy that included specific goals. And those include: reducing our gross emissions by 35% to 45% by 2030, setting an ambition to become a net-zero company by 2050; and endorsing the World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative, with an ambition to meet the goal by 2025.”
Enter CFACT, which, through its new investment activism program, is attending shareholder meetings of the most egregiously “woke” companies to expose these terrible resolutions and be a voice for reason.
CFACT attended the ConocoPhillips recent shareholder meeting, which was held remotely, and even submitted a question. As to be expected, the meeting had less to do with business strategies and profits, and far more to do with virtue signaling and climate activism.
Of the 21 questions answered in ConocoPhillips report from the annual meeting of stockholders, roughly half were political in nature. Of the questions that were selected and answered live during the remote meeting, all were political in nature, and 4 out of the 5 addressed were related to climate action.
Additionally, one of the shareholder resolutions up for a vote proposed setting emission reduction targets covering greenhouse gas emissions of the company’s operations and energy products. This resolution, despite a recommended vote of “no” from the Board, passed at the meeting by a vote of 58% voting yes. CFACT voted no.
CFACT submitted a question online ahead of the meeting, and also submitted a request live during the call to be recognized to ask a question. Both were summarily ignored. CFACT’s submitted question was not even addressed in the post-report from the meeting.
CFACT’s question was as follows:
We do not think the Board should appease those who want strict CO2 emissions reporting. The Board is correct in recommending a vote against the proposed shareholder resolution advocating for emissions reduction targets. Why aren’t the Board’s recommended policy votes against climate alarmism, which are good, not also reflected in the language of “official” ConocoPhillips’ reports — terrible reports that have no business supporting the UN IPCC and Paris Accords?
There is little doubt that companies like ConocoPhillips think they can rig the game in their favor by playing along with climate activists. They believe they can control the conversation, buy themselves time, or even wait the political climate out until a more favorable one dawns.
What ConocoPhillips and companies like it miss, however, is that climate activists and their political allies do not want a world where big fossil fuel companies are envisioned as climate champions. Climate activists want fossil fuel companies to go the way of the dodo. They want these companies extinct!
There’s no carbon capture, fuel diversification, or carbon credit offset scheme that will pacify them. As Politico reported just this week: “Hundreds of environmental and grassroots groups, including national groups such as Friends of the Earth, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, sent a letter to lawmakers Wednesday calling on [the Biden Administration] to pursue a national standard requiring 100% renewable power by 2030 … [these] left-wing and grassroots climate groups want to make clear they won’t settle for a policy that promotes nuclear energy, carbon capture and storage, and natural gas, even for the sake of political expediency.”
That’s where activism phrases like “Keep it in the Ground” come from. The Biden administration just came out recently as opposing carbon capture as a climate option.
CFACT will continue to pressure these corporations to address the facts and will continue to expose the nonsense going on behind closed doors at these meetings.
The Left must not be allowed to issue in socialism through the Trojan Horse of Wall Street.
Author
- Adam Houser
Adam Houser coordinates student leaders as National Director of CFACT’s collegians program and writes on issues of climate and energy.