Oil and natural gas companies, it turns out, are routinely included in sustainability indexes, especially those that take a “best-in-class” approach to their portfolios in order to gain exposure to all sectors of the economy, including energy. Shares in fossil fuel companies are also held by many funds that describe themselves as socially-responsible, or say they are concerned about climate change–including such well-known names as Calvert, Domini and Parnassus. I’ll have more to say about this in a day or two.
Chevron has a particularly unseemly record when it comes to the environment, and not just because of the lawsuit in Ecuador, which is about as tangled an affair as you can imagine. [If you want to read both sides of the lawsuit story, along with thousands of pages of documents, visit The Amazon Post, which is Chevron's website arguing that the lawsuit is a fraud, and ChevronToxico, the critics' website. Here's the latest on the case from Roger Parloff of Fortune, a respected legal journalist.] A court in Ecuador last year awarded plaintiffs suing Chevron over environmental damages an $18 billion judgment, but a US federal judge has called the verdict tainted.
Set the lawsuit aside for now. There are other good reasons to ask why Chevron would be included in a sustainability index. Among them:
- Chevron has been operating in the tar sands of Alberta since 2006, digging up some of the dirtiest oil to be found on the planet.
- Chevron’s huge Richmond, CA, oil refinery caught fire last summer, sending 15,000 people for treatment for respiratory problems. It’s had a history of air pollution violations.
- Chevron’s investments in alternative energy have been touted in advertising (“Human Energy”) but they represent a small fraction of the money the company spends exploring for oil and gas.
- Chevron’s climate change policy is weak. The company has opposed, through trade organizations like the American Petroleum Institute, pricing carbon emissions.
"Super-Pacs... not the point"
"Super-Pacs... not the point" - FAIL!
From a practical standpoint, it doesn't matter whether I give $2.5M directly to Bob, or whether I give Beth $2.5M which I know will be given to Bob...either way my INTENT is to get Bob $2.5M. Super-Pacs are just a back-end method of funding candidates or issues.
With this factored into the equation, now the comparison in Mr. Gunther's article is again valid.
Good for Chevron! It's about
Good for Chevron! It's about time to fight back against eco-human-rights-ambulance chasers
Clueless
Clueless
Conflating donations to
Conflating donations to senate, house, and presidential candidates with pressure group donations to a state controller who then pressures a corporation presently in litigation with those very same donors is theater of the absurd (or green colored lenses; you choose).
Chevron gave around $99K to Romney, around $85K to Obama in 2012 election cycle. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000015
When you get past Diane Feinstein (#12 on Chevron's 2012 donation list, by size), most federal candidates got $10K or less. More obscure federal candidates got as little as $4,000. Sure, the SuperPAC's give large amounts, but that's not the point here.
A STATE CONTROLLER got $60,000 (2/3 of what Chevron gave Romney directly, only $25,000 less than they gave Obama) from a few individuals in litigation with a corporation the controller then turned around and (green) pressured the corporation by trying to leverage pension funds. You find that equivalent?
Ironically, one of your own, Nell Greenberg/RAN has it about right on this subject: "However, unless a “data-driven” sustainability ranking builds in careful, qualitative judgments about a company’s overall social and environmental record, it will continue to miss the forest for the trees — VACUOUSLY patting company’s like oil giant Chevron on the back without taking into account reality on the ground or in our air and water." (emphasis mine)
Sustainabilchemists had BP as the #6 holding in the DJ Sustainability index on the morning of April 20, 2010 (ring a bell?). They had won around a dozen "sustainability" awards in the 8 years prior to that, all while I know for a fact that corroded pipelines in Alaska leaked 200,000 gallons of crude, while Texas City refinery exploded, and while BP had near a billion in CERCLA and similar soil/groundwater liabilities on their balance sheet. Missing the forest for the trees? Could you sustainabilchemists need any better evidence?
Where Greenberg has it wrong is the "qualitative" judgments. That's what got you sustainabilchemists in the described situation with BP. Substitute "qualitative" with "quantitative" and insert the words "scientific risk-based and economically cost/benefit justified" in front of the word "judgments" and then you'll have a start. (By present ESG standards, you demonstrate that you have no concept of what is material to human health and the environment.)
While patting BP on the back for "reducing their carbon footprint", or "increasing the numbers of women and minorities in senior management positions", all the above environmental ills went unresolved. Instead, you gave them awards! Many of these ills (contaminated soil, groundwater, sediments) posed potentially serious threats to human health and the environment. But reducing your "carbon footprint" gets you the #6 holding on the DJSI.
Got the picture yet? Let me know if I need to make it any clearer.
Your comment hits the nail on
Your comment hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately one needs a technical background to ascertain these professional propaganda machines and the general public is quite happy to believe these esoteric organizations are giving it to us straight. Many (not all) of the companies on the DOW sustainability index have their statements written by lawyers so as not to run afoul of green washing advocates.