Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jul 12 2005 (IPS) — An unusually broad coalition of 12 U.S. environmental and public-interest groups Tuesday launched a national boycott of ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, for undermining efforts to combat global warming and lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling.

The campaign, called "ExxposeExxon.com," also wants to exert pressure on the company to pay full compensation to fishermen and others harmed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and to invest more money in clean and renewable sources of energy, as a number of its competitors, such as BP and Shell, have done in recent years.

"For years, ExxonMobil has intentionally put its own profits above a clean environment and the health of America’s families," according to a letter sent by the groups to ExxonMobil’s controversial chief, Lee Raymond.

"As a result, we are asking Americans not to accept a new job at ExxonMobil, invest in the company, or buy ExxonMobil’s gas and products," stated the letter, which was signed by, among others, the leaders of Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defence Council, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife.

The campaign was launched with protests held today at Exxon service stations in more than 50 cities across the country, and organisers, which also include Union of Concerned Scientists, Moveon.org Political Action, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group (USPIRG), said they will press their protest through the internet, the news media, and grassroots campaigns.

In a statement, ExxonMobil said it was indeed developing technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that most scientists believe contribute to global warming.

"ExxonMobil recognises the risk of climate change and it potential impact on societies and ecosystems," said Russ Roberts of the company’s corporate relations department, "and we continue to take actions and work with others to address that risk."

He also denied that that the company was withholding payments related to the Exxon Valdez disaster.

The campaign launch, which included the release of a 23-page report that detailed the reasons for targeting ExxonMobil, comes amid growing public concern both at home and abroad about global warming, as well as increased support for the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that requires industrialised nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of six percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012.

Nearly 75 percent of the U.S. public believes Washington should ratify the Protocol, according to a survey taken by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) in advance of last week’s Group of Eight (G8) summit meeting in Scotland where Pres. George W. Bush, who has steadfastly opposed the treaty on the grounds that it would "wreck the U.S. economy," once again found himself isolated on the issue from the leaders of Western Europe, Japan, Canada, and even Russia.

Echoing a growing number – although still a minority – of Republican lawmakers who have also called for mandatory curbs on greenhouse emissions, the poll also found that two-thirds of self-described Republicans said they support the pending McCain-Lieberman bill that would require the U.S. to meet Kyoto’s targets by 2020, even if it cost the average household 180 dollars a year to do so.

ExxonMobil’s adamant opposition to any legislation that would limit emissions – as well as its efforts to undermine the increasingly solid scientific consensus that greenhouse emissions are a major contributor to global warming and its closeness to the Bush administration – has made long made it a choice target for environmentalists.

It came as no surprise to them when Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute and chief of staff of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, was hired by ExxonMobil immediately after resigning from his administration post just last month.

His resignation was prompted by a New York Times investigative report that Cooney, who has no scientific background, routinely edited government reports to cast doubt on the link between fossil fuel emission and global warming.

Indeed, ExxonMobil’s efforts to cast doubt on the link between greenhouse emissions and warming have been a hallmark of Raymond’s stewardship of the company. In a recent interview, Raymond, whom Greenpeace refers to as the "No. 1 climate criminal," told the Wall Street Journal that "it’s yet to be shown how much of (global warming) is really related to the activities of man."

In campaigning against Kyoto and other schemes to limit emissions, Exxon-Mobil has funded more than three dozen organisations and coalitions that have tried to undermine the consensus on global warming, including 26 groups that collectively received 1.9 million dollars in 2004. Between 1998 and 2004, the company gave more than 15 million dollars to groups that worked to influence global warming policy, according to the report.

Many recipients of Exxon’s largesse have been members of the "Cooler Heads Coalition" (CHC), which was founded in 1997 after the collapse – due to the desertion of automobile manufacturers and other major oil companies, such as BP, Shell, and ChevronTexaco – from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), a similar alliance created in the late 1980s when global warming first became a major public concern.

Among the groups recently funded by Exxon, according to the report, are the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which chairs the CHC, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, the Capital Research Centre’s Green Watch Project, the Centre for the Defense of Free Enterprise, the George Marshall Institute, and the International Policy Network.

One of ExxonMobil’s 2003 and 2004 recipients, the National Centre for Policy Analysis (NCPA), was the first to publicly denounce Tuesday’s boycott launch.

"Contrary to environmental lobbyists’ claims, there is still a lively scientific debate concerning the extent to which human activities contribute to the earth’s current warming trend," the group said from its Dallas headquarters. "Exxon recognises that the question is still open, but these environmentalists want to shut off public debate and muzzle any research that undermines their political goals."

In addition to the company’s role in influencing public perceptions about the causes and risks of global warming, the boycott organisers complained about ExxonMobil’s failure to invest in renewable energy despite a record-breaking 25.3 billion dollars in net income in 2004.

Raymond has argued that it makes more sense to invest in technologies that make energy use more efficient than in those whose economic return remains uncertain. In the Journal article, he noted that Exxon invested relatively heavily in renewable energy sources in the late 1970s but that none of them turned out to be "economic."