by Jane Dale Owen
No doubt the ExxonMobil Annual Shareholders’ Meeting on May 28 will open with great fanfare celebrating last year’s $40 billion in profits, and all the company is doing to make the world a better place. But not all shareholders are so thrilled about ExxonMobil’s performance. My family members and I are shareholders in ExxonMobil, and many of us are very concerned about the devastating effect the largest privately-held oil company in the world is having on the health of people living near our refineries and chemical plants, and on the planet.My grandfather was Robert Lee Blaffer, co-founder of Humble Oil, the parent company of ExxonMobil. He was a gentleman and humanitarian who volunteered at hospitals in his spare time. He would be appalled by the way the company has ignored the health effects of industry pollution, especially for low-income and disadvantaged people who live near oil refineries and chemical plants. In the Political Economy Research Institute’s recent “Toxic 100” report released in April, ExxonMobil ranks 10th among the worst corporate toxic polluters in the United States. This is unacceptable considering the company’s huge profits.
My grandfather would also be dismayed by ExxonMobil’s long-standing denial of the industry’s contribution to global warming and lack of efforts to diversify and move toward more sustainable energy solutions. He would turn over in his grave if he knew that the company he helped start was benefiting from the Iraq war that has taken the lives of so many and plundered so much of the land and resources there.
We believe greed, arrogance and short-term thinking have led ExxonMobil to jeopardize the company’s reputation and put the planet, human health and our investments at risk. We are asking ExxonMobil board members and executives, who are boasting record-breaking profits this year, to take measures to prevent:
- the birth defects, illness and death suffered by increasing numbers of families living near the facilities that bring you these huge profits
- the air pollution caused by your operations and the use of your products that makes the air in most large cities today dangerous to breatherisk to shareholder investments as the focus on fossil fuels becomes obsolete and other companies move toward clean, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.
We join with the Exxon Enough! coalition in calling on ExxonMobil management to:
- Undertake health surveys of all the people living in communities where it has facilities, on the Texas Gulf Coast and elsewhere, and to provide for relocation and on-going health care for people living near its facilities
- Accept the necessity of a windfall war profits tax
- Invest in alternative energy sources and alternative transportation systems as a way of reducing global warming.
My family and I are saying Exxon enough of your pollution that harms the health of the people living near your refineries and plants; enough of your war-profiteering; enough of your excess profits while we pay outrageous prices for gas; enough of your denial that burning petroleum products fuels global warming; and enough of your lack of foresight, accountability and fiscal responsibility.
Owen, a Houstonian, is president of Citizens League for Environmental Action Now (CLEAN). She is granddaughter of Robert Lee Blaffer, co-founder of Humble Oil, and the only nonscientist member of the Federation of American Scientists.
