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Exxon Mobile Annual Meeting Crashed by Green Peace 5/30/03
The group vows to continue to harass Exxon Mobile "while they continue doing sabotage against efforts to solve global warming," said spokesman, Ben Stewart. While alternate energy theories abound, they are very expensive and unreliable. "New solar-power capacity is triple the cost of new natural gas-generated electricity and quadruple the cost of power bought on the open market. New wind power capacity costs 50 to 100 per cent more than new gas-generated electricity and spot-market power," according to H. Sterling Burnett, Ph. D. and Senior Fellow for the National Center for Policy Analysis. Exxon Mobile also has come under fire for donating money to organizations that are critical of the global warming theory such as Frontiers of Freedom and Competitive Enterprise Institute. Exxon spokesman, Tom Cirigliano defends their actions, saying; "[T]here is this whole issue that no one should question the science of global climate change that is ludicrous. That's the kind of dark-age thinking that gets you in a lot of trouble." As for the Green Peace antics; Cirigliano said; "When you're the world's largest publicly traded energy company, you're a target for a number of the crazies. If you're a fringe, radical organization like Greenpeace, you need a target, you need and enemy, and you need a villain." RELATED STORIES: Exxon Mobil Shareholders Vote Down 12 Resolutions 05/28/2003 By SUDEEP REDDY / The Dallas Morning News Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders voted down each of the 12 resolutions presented Wednesday at the company's annual meeting, but several proposals - related to the environment and employment policies - gained support over previous years. The most heavily pushed was a new resolution that calls on the Irving-based oil company to prepare a more detailed report about how it plans to address financial risks from climate change. It received 22 percent of the 5.5 billion shares cast at the meeting. Despite intensifying pressure from environmental groups and institutional shareholders, Exxon Mobil has maintained its position questioning the scientific claims around global warming and the viability of renewable energy technologies. >A resolution calling for a report on renewable energy received 21 percent of the votes cast, up from 20.2 percent last year. Another resolution to include sexual orientation in Exxon Mobil's anti-discrimination policies received 27.1 percent of the votes, up from 23.9 percent last year. The three-hour meeting was held at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center amid an escalated police presence and tight security after 36 Greenpeace protesters were arrested Tuesday after breaking into Exxon Mobil's Irving headquarters to protest the company's environmental stances. A third of those arrested had posted bail by Wednesday afternoon, and the rest were awaiting arraignment, Irving police said. ------------------------------------------------------------- Energy Bill Mistakes: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off The ultimate goals of a new "National Energy Policy" should be economic growth and consumer freedom of choice. Unfortunately, versions of the energy bill currently being debated in Congress include some economically harmful proposals designed to appease certain politically powerful constituencies. The most harmful provisions include greenhouse gas emissions limits, renewable energy mandates and increased fuel economy standards. If enacted, these regulations would retard economic growth and reduce consumer choice. Slipping Kyoto through the Back Door. Proponents of the theory that human activities (primarily energy use) are causing global warming are attempting to use the energy bill as a vehicle to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. George W. Bush announced early in his presidency that the United States would not implement the Kyoto Protocol for the control of greenhouse gas emissions. Since then, a number of legislators have attempted to attach climate change provisions to energy legislation. They would set mandatory caps on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants or cut greenhouse gas emissions through a system of government credits to encourage early action by industry or both. Cap and Trade. Although all mammals exhale CO2, one proposal would treat CO2 as an air pollutant like mercury, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide - which are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It would require that power plants reduce the emissions of these gases via a "cap and trade" mechanism. This means setting a cap on total emissions and auctioning CO2 emissions allowances to energy producing firms that could use them or trade the allowances. Whatever the merits of using a cap and trade approach to reduce pollution, there is no good argument for demanding drastic reductions in CO2 emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant and is not toxic at any foreseeable atmospheric level. Rather, CO2 is essential to life on earth. CO2 is implicated in global warming as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. But capping U.S. CO2 emissions would not reduce the threat of global warming. According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, even if the United States cut its greenhouse gas emissions to the level required by the Kyoto Protocol and all of the other nations met their greenhouse-gas reduction targets, the reduction in average global temperatures would be less than a half-degree Celsius. This negligible reduction would come at the steep cost of a 50 percent increase in energy prices, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates, and a 1 percent drop in gross domestic product and a million jobs lost, according to Energy Information Administration projections. Credits for Early Action. Even establishing a system that awards credits to companies for voluntarily reducing emissions creates problems. A system of early action credits would measure emissions reductions under voluntary plans. Companies would then be able to count their voluntary reductions against emissions if reductions later become mandatory. Accordingly, voluntary credits likely would encourage industry to lobby for a mandatory cap since the emissions credits would have no appreciable market value unless the cap were mandatory. Mandating Renewable Energy Use Various legislators have also attempted to embed a renewable energy portfolio in the proposed national energy policy. This mandate would require each energy provider to ensure that a set percentage (usually 10 or 20 percent) of its delivered energy comes from a renewable energy source within the next 10 to 15 years. Proponents argue that this will improve air quality, reduce the threat of global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign energy supplies. However, due to high cost and environmental problems, the best research indicates that renewable sources - excluding hydroelectric dams - will continue to provide less than 10 percent of our energy needs during the next 50 years. After more than 30 years and billions of dollars of government subsidies, neither wind nor solar power is economically competitive with fossil fuel. The costs for both solar power and wind power have fallen considerably during the past 20 years, but even with generous subsidies:
New wind power capacity costs 50 to 100 percent more than new gas-generated electricity and spot-market power.
In addition, these renewable energy technologies have their own negative environmental impacts. For instance, both types of plants take up enormous amounts of space. They are often sited in undeveloped or pristine areas, where they detract from the sites' environmental and recreational values. When sited near developed areas, they cause visual blight, and in the case of wind power, noise pollution. Wind turbines have the added environmental drawback that they kill thousands of migratory songbirds, waterfowl and raptors each year. If the United States experiences even modest economic growth during the next 20 years, electricity demand could increase by more than 45 percent. Thus, requiring each utility's generating portfolio to include a significant portion of intermittent, high-cost wind and solar energy would condemn the nation to energy shortages and stagnant economic growth. CAFE Rides Again Some lawmakers have argued that increasing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard would improve America's energy security while reducing the threat of global warming. CAFE was enacted during the 1975 "energy crisis." It required auto manufacturers to meet certain mileage standards or pay a tax on high-fuel-consumption vehicles. The goal of CAFE was to reduce America's reliance on foreign oil. While today's automobiles and trucks get substantially more miles per gallon than those in the 1970s, oil imports have risen from 35 percent of U.S. consumption in 1974 to more than 52 percent today. Improved fuel economy and declining oil prices have made driving significantly less expensive. When driving is cheap, people drive more - on the average, twice as many miles as they did when CAFE was enacted. Concerning global warming, the EPA has estimated that, at most, 1.5 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from cars and light trucks. As a result, raising CAFE standards to 40 mpg would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than half of 1 percent - a negligible amount. Furthermore, the National Academy of Sciences reported that increasing CAFE standards could be counterproductive. It might reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobile tailpipes, but greenhouse gas emissions from the production of substitute materials used to make the cars more efficient - such as aluminum, carbon fibers or plastics - could substantially offset gains achieved through improved fuel economy. Conclusion Few policy issues have as direct a bearing on our well-being as a national energy policy. A bad energy policy can hamper economic growth. Thus, when shaping an energy policy, legislators should focus on economic growth and consumer choice. The policy provisions discussed above would restrict our sources of energy, burden the economy and limit consumer choice. They do not merit inclusion in a national energy policy.
National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) 601 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Copyright © 2003 National Center for Policy Analysis - All rights reserved. ------------------------------------------------ Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming
At the same time, the company, the world's largest oil and gas concern, has increased donations to Washington-based policy groups that, like Exxon itself, question the human role in global warming and argue that proposed government policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming are too heavy handed. Exxon now gives more than $1 million a year to such organizations, which include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the George C. Marshall Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council. The organizations are modest in size but have been outspoken in the global warming debate. Exxon has become the single-largest corporate donor to some of the groups, accounting for more than 10 percent of their annual budgets. While a few of the groups say they also receive some money from other oil companies, it is only a small fraction of what they receive from Exxon Mobil. "We want to support organizations that are trying to broaden the debate on an issue that is so important to all of us," said Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon. "There is this whole issue that no one should question the science of global climate change that is ludicrous. That's the kind of dark-ages thinking that gets you in a lot of trouble." He also noted, "These are not single-agenda groups." The organizations emphasize that while their views align with Exxon's, the company's money does not influence their policy conclusions. Indeed, the organizations say they have been sought out in part because of their credibility. "They've determined that we are effective at what we do," said George C. Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative group that maintains that human activities are not responsible for global warming. He says Exxon essentially takes the attitude, "We like to make it possible to do more of that." Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documents. But Mr. Landrith said the growth was not as sharp as it appears because the money is actually spread over three years. The increase corresponds with a rising level of public debate since the United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, some of the groups said. After President Bush rejected the protocol, a treaty requiring nations to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases, many corporations shifted their attention to Washington, where the debate has centered on proposals for domestic curbs on the emissions. "Firefighters' budgets go up when fires go up," said Fred L. Smith, the head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Myron Ebell, an analyst from the institute, spoke at last year's Exxon shareholders' meeting, where he criticized a renewable energy resolution proposed by a group of shareholders. Exxon's backing of third-party groups is a marked contrast to its more public role in the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group formed in 1989 to challenge the science around global warming. The group eventually disbanded when oil and auto companies started to withdraw. As companies were left to walk their own path, Exxon shifted money toward independent policy groups. "Now it's come down to a few of these groups to be the good foot soldiers of the corporate community on climate change," said Kert Davies, a research director for Greenpeace, which has tried to organize an international boycott of Exxon. Exxon's publicly disclosed documents reveal that donations to many of these organizations increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2002. And money to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that works with state legislators, has almost tripled, as the policy debate has moved to the state level. The gifts are minuscule compared with the $100 million, 10-year scientific grant to Stanford, which is establishing a research center that will focus on technologies that could provide energy without adding to greenhouse gases linked by scientists to global warming. Nevertheless, the donations in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars are significant for groups with budgets ranging from $700,000 to $4 million. Critics say that Exxon and these groups continue to muddle the debate even as scientific consensus has emerged, and as much of the industry has taken a more conciliatory stance toward the reality of global warming. As Exxon has become isolated from its peers, it has faced increasing pressure from shareholders and environmentalists. BP, Shell and ChevronTexaco have developed strategies that incorporate renewable energy, carbon trading and emissions reductions. Among the initiatives that Exxon's money has helped is the Center for Science and Public Policy. The two-month-old center is a one-man operation that brings scientists to Capitol Hill on two issues: global warming and the health effects of mercury. "We don't lobby, we educate," said Bob Ferguson, head of the center, who spent 24 years working as a Republican Congressional staff member. "We try to be nonpolitical and nonpartisan and nonideological." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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