FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 30, 2017
Dallas, Texas—Greenpeace kicked off a multi-faceted visual campaign this week confronting Exxon before its upcoming shareholder meeting in Dallas on May 31st. Using billboard space along Interstate 35-E and Highway 75, its own thermal airship and stickers at Exxon gas stations, Greenpeace highlights Exxon’s corporate greed and its decades of climate denial and obstruction of action on climate change.
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“The climate chaos we are facing did not happen without responsible parties. It’s time to turn the public spotlight on Exxon’s massive climate coverup,” said Greenpeace USA Senior Climate Campaigner Naomi Ages. “Exxon knows that the age of oil is nearly over. People and communities in this country deserve and want lifestyles powered by renewable energy and we cannot let Exxon and the oil industry’s greed get in the way.”
Since the company ClearChannel, which owns the billboards Greenpeace wanted to use in the Dallas region, prohibited Greenpeace from mentioning Exxon or other specific oil companies, Greenpeace added its own thermal airship to the visual campaign to more explicitly confront Exxon. The message on the airship reads “You Pay the Price for Exxon’s Greed.” One of the billboard messages depicts a Twitter conversation between @WayneTracker and @GreenpeaceUSA about climate denial. Wayne Tracker is the email alias former Exxon CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson used at Exxon to send emails about climate risks. Greenpeace supporters voted on the messages that were featured on two billboards.
In Exxon’s most recent annual energy outlook, the company presents a world oil demand scenario and its plans to profit that flatly contradict the goals of the Paris agreement, the international climate agreement that Exxon has said it supports. Exxon fails to disclose how much global temperatures will increase under its projected scenario, but they would almost certainly significantly exceed the “below” two degrees Celsius guideline agreed to last year in Paris.
“Investors should recognize that Exxon is relying on an outdated business model that contributes to an unsafe climate that will impact us all, and demand that Exxon explain how they will adapt to a carbon-constrained world,” Ages said. “Exxon is content to hypocritically profit from catastrophic climate change that could destroy people’s lives, and is already impacting people living in the company’s home state of Texas.”
Greenpeace, along with 18 California Representatives in Congress, and the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board as recently as today, have asked California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to investigate what Exxon knew about climate change, when it knew it, and what it did with that knowledge. The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts are currently investigating the company.
Contact Cassady Craighill, 828-817-3328, cassady.craighill@greenpeace.
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