The Shareholders Vs. Exxon

In our first episode on green investing, Are My Retirement Savings Invested in Fossil Fuels?? Help!, we talked about how to get your retirement money out of fossil fuels. Now, we’re looking at a different strategy – keeping your money IN fossil fuels, and using those investments as leverage to force companies into changing their behavior. Companies like Exxon Mobil, the poster child for a big, bad fossil fuel company. Because of its size and power, taking on a company like Exxon could seem kind of hopeless. But recently, an unlikely coalition of people have done just that — a coalition that included a group not typically associated with revolutionary behavior…Wall Street investors.

Guests: Diana Best, Charlie Penner, Boris Khentov

Calls to Action:

• Understand and track the issues that shareholders raise via shareholder resolutions – check out Ceres’ Climate and Sustainability Shareholder Resolutions Database, which tracks shareholder resolutions focused on the climate crisis, energy, water scarcity, and sustainability reporting, and the shareholder resolutions filed by As You Sow, the shareholder advocacy group who runs FossilFreeFunds.org.
• If you own stock in a company directly (not in a mutual fund), you can vote on that company’s proxy ballot. Find out what resolutions are coming up for vote – the Proxy Preview offers an annual pre-season guide.
• If you’re invested in mutual funds or ETFs (e.g. via your 401k) understand how votes are being cast on your behalf by asset managers that offer those funds. ShareAction, MajorityAction, Ceres, Morningstar and others profile asset managers’ climate-related proxy voting. Contact your asset manager encouraging them to vote in support of climate-focused resolutions.
• Check out The Sunrise Project’s campaign BlackRock’s Big Problem.

Learn More

• Read Larry Fink’s 2020 and 2021 Letters to CEOs, and BlackRock’s report on their sustainability actions for 2020.
• Read The Sunrise Project’s report on how investing trends threaten climate goals.
• Read Boris Khentov’s op-ed Why Index Funds Should Tell Us How They’re Voting.

Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Rachel Waldholz and Lauren Silverman. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis and Anna Ladd. Our supervising producer is Lauren Silverman. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Emma Munger and Peter Leonard.

Our fact checker this episode was Claudia Geib. Special thanks to Geoffrey Rogow, Jackie Cook and Rachel Strom.

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