When Wall Street, Big Business and Rockefeller-owned Exxon Back Climate Change Pact You Know It's a Big Slush Fund for the Psychopaths That Rule the World

Exxon vote shows Wall Street diverging from Trump on climate change

May 31, 2017

(Reuters) - Major investors put U.S. industry on notice on Wednesday that climate change matters, even as reports emerged that President Donald Trump plans to withdraw the United States from an international pact to fight global warming.

A number of large institutional fund firms including BlackRock Inc, the world's largest asset manager, supported a shareholder resolution calling on Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) to share more information about how new technologies and climate change regulations could impact the business of the world's largest publicly traded oil company. The proposal won the support of 62.3 percent of votes cast.

The victory, on such a wide margin, was hailed by climate activists as a turning point in their decades-long campaign to get oil and gas companies to communicate how they would adapt to a low-carbon economy.

With major investors now seeing climate change as a major risk, activists said U.S. corporations will have to be more transparent about the impact of a warming planet even if the United States withdraws from the 2015 Paris climate accord, as Trump promised during his presidential campaign.

"Economic forces are outrunning any other considerations," said Anne Simpson, investment director for sustainability at the California Public Employees' Retirement System, one of the sponsors of the resolution.

She credited big investors in Exxon for the change, since at least some of them switched their votes after last year when a similar measure won just 38 percent support.

"We have seen a sea change in their viewpoint," she said. Many top investors now consider their votes on shareholder proposals "on merit, rather than considering it a test of loyalty to management," she said.

Among Exxon’s top investors, Vanguard Group Inc and BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) opposed last year's call for climate change reporting. A spokeswoman for Vanguard, which has about 7 percent of Exxon's shares, declined to comment on its voting this year.

A person familiar with the matter said funds run by BlackRock, which holds about 6 percent of Exxon shares, voted in favor of the climate resolution.

Filings showing their exact votes are not due for months. But both fund firms and others have taken steps since last year to make it easier to support climate resolutions.

A spokesman for Exxon's ninth-largest investor Northern Trust Corp (NTRS.O), Doug Holt, said it voted in favor of the proposal, citing its own guidelines updated in 2016.

THE VOTE FROM THE STREET

The investment firms' approach reflects a new interest in climate matters among their own investors, who have stuffed money into so-called "green" mutual funds and other vehicles that use environmental factors in their stockpicking.

Wall Street's priorities have shifted the terms of debate at a number of other energy and utility companies. A majority of shareholders voting at Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N) and PPL Corp (PPL.N) called for similar reports on the risks of climate change. Votes on two more of the measures are scheduled for June 7 at Devon Energy Corp (DVN.N) and at Hess Corp (HES.N).

Michael Crosby, involved in corporate outreach for the Midwest Capuchin Franciscans, a religious order, said Wednesday's vote was a rejection of Exxon's arguments it already provides enough detail on its outlook.
 
"The Street is saying, you have to give better evidence," Crosby said.

After the measure passed, Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods said its board would reconsider its climate communications.

The activists now face the task of maintaining alliances with leaders like Woods who opposed their resolutions but who in some cases support the 195-nation Paris agreement. Exxon said in a March 22 letter to the White House that the Paris deal is "an effective framework for addressing the risks of climate change."

Trump had at least one ally at Exxon's meeting in Dallas, Steven Milloy of Potomac, Maryland, who urged other investors to support his resolution that would make it harder to file proposals like the one on climate change.

Milloy said management should show less concerns for climate issues, which he called misplaced, and cited Trump as a model. "For the first time we have a president who actively opposes climate hysteria," Milloy said.

According to Exxon, Milloy's proposal received support from 1.6 percent of votes cast.

Exxon climate vote puts sector on notice

June 2, 2017

(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil shareholders have finally won a long-sought climate-change victory. Over 60 percent of them backed a move that forces the $340 billion oil giant to ramp up global-warming disclosure, up from under 40 percent in a similar attempt last year. Exxon already embraces the debate more than most. But shareholders want the company to be more forthcoming. Holdout industry peers will have to follow or risk investor ire.

Chief Executive Darren Woods, who took the helm at the beginning of the year, wrote in his first blog post about the importance of managing the risks of climate change. On several occasions Woods has talked about how Exxon does business in an environment in which, under the 2015 Paris accord, nearly 200 countries including China and India have agreed to reduce their carbon emissions.

Trump Fulfills Campaign Pledge and Abandons Global Climate Pact; 'Green Climate Fund' to Redistribute Wealth from Rich Countries to the Tiny Elite That Runs the World

June 1, 2017

(Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would withdraw the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, a move that fulfilled a major campaign pledge but drew condemnation from U.S. allies and business leaders.

Trump, tapping into the "America First" message he used when he was elected president last year, said the Paris accord would undermine the U.S. economy, cost U.S. jobs, weaken American national sovereignty and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to the other countries of the world.

"We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more. And they won't be," Trump said.

"The same nations asking us to stay in the agreement are the countries that have collectively cost America trillions of dollars through tough trade practices and in many cases lax contributions to our critical military alliance," Trump added.

Supporters of the accord, including some leading U.S. business figures, called Trump's move a blow to international efforts to curb the warming of the planet that threatens far-reaching consequences for this century and beyond. Former Democratic President Barack Obama expressed regret over the pullout from a deal he was instrumental in brokering.

"But even in the absence of American leadership; even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future; I’m confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got," Obama added.

"Today's decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world," Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein wrote on Twitter.

Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, said his administration would begin negotiations either to re-enter the Paris accord or to have a new agreement "on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers." He complained in particular about China's terms under the agreement.

International leaders including the pope had pressed Trump not follow through on an election campaign promise to abandon the accord, and they lamented his decision.

Paris Climate Accord to Take Effect; Obama Hails 'Historic Day'

October 5, 2016

Reuters - A global agreement to combat climate change will take force after support from European nations sent the accord across an important threshold on Wednesday, prompting U.S. President Barack Obama to hail it as a "historic day" for protecting the planet.

European nations raised backing for the 2015 Paris Agreement to countries representing 56.75 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 percent needed for implementation, a United Nations website showed.

The deal will formally start in 30 days on Nov. 4, four days before the U.S. presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump opposes the accord and Democrat Hillary Clinton strongly supports it.

China and the United States joined up last month in a joint step by the world's top emitters.

Obama called Wednesday "a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations" and he told reporters on the White House Rose Garden:

"If we follow through on the commitments that this Paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for our planet."

Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta - European Union nations which have completed domestic ratification and account for about four percent of emissions - formally signed up on Wednesday.

In total, 72 countries out of 195 have ratified the agreement, according to the U.N. website.

"Great job!" tweeted European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete.

The Europeans brought forward a formal submission of documents to the United Nations from a ceremony planned on Friday, fearing that other nations might ratify and trigger entry into force without them.

"We didn't want to be upstaged," an EU diplomat said.

Many praised the rapid ratification of an agreement meant to cut global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, to limit floods, droughts, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels.

"What once seemed unthinkable is now unstoppable," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

But all said more work was needed.

"It is no exaggeration to say we are in a race against time," said Thoriq Ibrahim, Environment Minister for the Maldives and Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States which fears the impact of rising sea levels.

By contrast, it took eight years for the previous U.N. climate deal, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, to gain enough backing to take effect. It obliged only rich nations to cut emissions and the United States stayed out of it.

Opposition continues in the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to Democrat Obama's climate change policies.

"The Paris climate deal would be disastrous for the American economy," said House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican.

By contrast, Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and Chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, said ratification showed that a shift to a low-carbon economy is "urgent, inevitable, and accelerating faster than we ever believed possible".

California Paves the Way to a National Carbon Trading Scheme or Tax

Will Sabel Courtney

August 25, 2016

Building on top of some of the strictest existing environmental laws in the nation, the legislature of California has voted to implement a measure to cut greenhouse gases in the state a further 40 percent beyond the current target by the year 2030.

The state currently is on track to meet its current goal, which seeks to reduce emissions that can hold in heat to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The new bill, approved by the state Senate on Wednesday, would lower greenhouse gases a further 40 percent below that in the following decade. A linked bill in the state Assembly was approved several hours earlier; Governor Jerry Brown has stated that he will sign both bills when they land on his desk.

"It's about the world in which we live becoming decarbonized and sustainable," Brown said during a press conference, according to Reuters. "These regulations will work to achieve that goal."

The bills will give the state legislature additional control over the California Air Resources Board, which, among other duties, sets emissions limits for vehicles sold in the state. In spite of being a state agency, it exerts a national influence; 11 other states have chosen to abide by CARB’s aggressive pollution controls, and the agency has been known to work with the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation on fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards.

The new legislation builds upon the 2006 law that set the aggressive 2020 goal the state is currently working towards, which sought to cut down on the greenhouse emissions flowing from automobiles and industry alike. That law imposed a cap-and-trade program on pollutants in the state; in spite of the governor’s enthusiastic support for such measures, however, the system has reportedly not lived up to expectations, with only 34 percent of available credits being sold this month.

The new bills do not state if they would use cap-and-trade to controlling carbon emissions and the like, or if the state should seek out an alternate means of enforcing the standards.

The new guideline is likely to place even more pressure on automakers to push towards electric vehicles and other zero-emissions powertrains to lower their total carbon footprint. Between the long list of countries in Europe seeking to ban new gas-powered cars between 2025 and 2030 and this new California measure, it seems as though the next decade may prove to be the era when electric cars finally achieve dominance in the marketplace.

Climate Change is One of the Greatest Propaganda Campaigns in World History

Stephen Moore: Climate Change 'One of Greatest Propaganda Campaigns in World History’--'Very Stalinistic'

June 9, 2016

CNS NEWS - Commenting on the Obama administration’s high-pressure offensive to address global warming, leading economist and author Stephen Moore said it is “amazing” because this “dingbat idea of global climate change” is “one of the greatest propaganda campaigns in world history” executed by the political left.

During a June 3 radio interview on the nationally syndicated Janet Mefferd Today show, Moore, the founder of the Club for Growth and a former Wall Street Journal editorial board member, said, “It’s really amazing, I have to say. I have to tip my hat to the left: This has been one of the greatest propaganda campaigns in world history that the left has pulled off.”

“I mean, they’ve taken this dingbat idea of global climate change and they’ve put it in the schools, they’ve put it in the movies, they’ve put it in the media and the churches — you know, I’m Catholic, even the Pope talks about climate change,” said Moore, co-author of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy.

“So, it’s very alarming how this propaganda campaign, that they made this stuff out of, almost completely out of thin air, and they’ve convinced millions and millions of thought leaders that this stuff is real,” said Moore, who is the Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Project for Economic Growth.

Host Janet Mefferd then said,

“And when you look at some of the statements of people at the U.N., for example – I’m just thinking of this off the top of my head -- they have no problems with things like population control. They don’t have any problem with that. So, you might make the leap in logic that if people were harmed and/or starved to death, eh, would they [climate change activists] really mind because it’s betterment of the planet, I suppose?”

Carbon Dioxide is Generally Regarded as a Safe and Non-toxic, Inert Gas

While convenient to use the term 'carbon emissions', it's not accurate to conflate it with 'CO2', carbon dioxide. CO2 is a vaporous (invisible) gas, NOT soot or dust or grit -- in other words, not an air pollutant. The Supreme Court, under the Clean Air Act, made a huge mistake in allowing the EPA to control it, and it needs to be reversed. The enormous hoax, promulgated by the anti-capitalist, that we can manage climate by keeping fossil fuels 'in the ground' is so heavily entrenched in the dogma of our public schools that the little skulls of 'mush' are already seriously tainted.  It'll take generations to straighten this mess out.

The term ‘carbon pollution’ is unscientific and misleading

February 20, 2014

JustFactsDaily - “Language is power,” and “with careful selection of and modification to language,” wrote Evie Loveband in the journal Idiom, any one person “has the power to control the debate and rewrite history.” This truism spurs endless debates over terminology in the political arena: Are we talking about an “unborn child” or a “fetus”? Is he “gay” or “homosexual”? Are we eating “lean finely textured beef” or “pink slime”? Should we “give amnesty to illegal immigrants” or “legalize undocumented workers”?

Ultimately, many language choices are subjective, but some cross the line from preference to deceitfulness. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote about people who use words “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”

Such is the case with purveyors of the term “carbon pollution,” a phrase that conflates carbon dioxide with noxious chemicals like carbon monoxide and black carbon. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is the primary man-made greenhouse gas, but it is also a natural substance that is essential for life. Additionally, it is colorless, odorless, and nontoxic at many times the concentration in earth’s atmosphere. In fact, nature produces considerably more CO2 than man.

Thus, for reasons detailed below, referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution” is highly misleading.

First, the phrase “carbon pollution” is scientifically inaccurate because there are more than ten million different carbon compounds, and the word “carbon” could refer to any of them. Some of the more notorious of these compounds are highly poisonous, such as carbon monoxide (a deadly gas) and black carbon (the primary ingredient of cancerous and mutagenic soot). Using a phrase that does not distinguish between such drastically different substances is a sure way to misinform people.

Second, the term “pollution” conjures up images of smoke pouring from smokestacks and sewage flowing into rivers, which are markedly different from CO2 emissions. Those who use the word “pollution” for CO2 draw no distinction between these scenarios, which again encourages a false impression.

Some of the more prominent users of this verbiage go even further to foster the idea of CO2 as a toxic contaminant. For example, while referring to CO2 as “carbon pollution,” President Obama criticizes “polluters” who “emit the dangerous carbon emissions that contaminate the water we drink and pollute the air that we breathe.” In stark contrast, the academic book Carbon Dioxide Capture for Storage in Deep Geologic Formations explains that:

Carbon dioxide is generally regarded as a safe and non-toxic, inert gas. It is an essential part of the fundamental biological processes of all living things. It does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans.

Fueling the deceitful impression advanced by Obama and others, major media outlets, such as Politico, NBC News, and the New York Times, publish articles and commentaries that refer to CO2 as “carbon pollution” with pictures of billowing smokestacks, such as these:

 
The fact is that none of the smoke in these pictures is CO2, because CO2 is invisible except under extreme pressures and temperatures that cause it to transition from a gas to a liquid or solid. Such conditions are far outside the range of anything found in smokestacks.

Some argue that it is acceptable to call CO2 a pollutant because of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that allowed the EPA to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act’s expansive definition of pollution. Such rationale, however, is not a license to use these words in ways that create misleading impressions.

Furthermore, why would anyone who honestly wants to inform people employ an ambiguous and unscientific phrase like “carbon pollution” in favor of a clear and scientifically accurate term like “greenhouse gas”? Only those who simply echo what they hear or those wantonly pushing global warming-related taxes, regulations or similar polices would use such verbiage.

In sum, those who refer to carbon dioxide as “pollution” blur a critical distinction between noxious pollutants and greenhouse gases. Moreover, media outlets that consciously engage in this practice blur a critical distinction between journalism and activism.

Media Smearing Teachers Who Don't Follow the Script to Indoctrinate Our Youth

Hey US science teachers, leave those climate myths alone

As most readers are aware, and stated in posts a few hours after (ClimateGate) CG broke out, Mike’s Nature trick was first uncovered by UC here. [Source]