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CAMPAIGN INFORMATION
The Issues and Our Demands
1. MONEY IN POLITICS: ExxonMobil must stop giving corporate political campaign donations and taking millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for environmentally and socially destructive projects.
No one institution should have the right to determine government policy in a democracy. ExxonMobil gets away with its outrageous activities through buying government influence. Since 1997 it has spent $47 million in lobbying government officials. In the 2000 election cycle, ExxonMobil and its employees donated $1,375,250, 89 percent of which went to Republican candidates, helping to ensure that fellow Texan and oil executive George W. Bush got elected to the White House. Note: All campaign finance and lobbying data above taken from the Center for Responsive Politics.
Its investment has paid off. ExxonMobil lobbied hard against the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty to address global warming. Last year, the Bush Administration pulled the US out of Kyoto. Earlier this year Bush announced that the US response to climate change would be voluntary reductions of carbon dioxide, and that under this plan emissions will be allowed to significantly increase. In the Senate, ExxonMobil's extensive lobbying with its fossil fuel allies has ensured a US energy policy that increases our dependence on polluting fossil fuels, instead of moving us toward energy security based on renewable energy sources.
Enron taught us all how corporations and government are intertwined. Similarly, ExxonMobil guarantees its influence over public policy by investing millions in campaigns and lobbying. In return, ExxonMobil receives access, which leads to millions in taxpayer subsidies that are provided by the US government and other public finance agencies, including the World Bank. Our tax dollars should not subsidize ExxonMobil's bad corporate behavior.
Find out more:
Cashing in on Democracy (factsheet: html)
www.thealliancefordemocracy.org
www.seen.org
2. GLOBAL WARMING: ExxonMobil must stop sabotaging international efforts to address global warming and support
mandatory reductions in global warming pollution.
ExxonMobil denies any responsibility for climate change, openly funds climate skeptics, spent millions on a misinformation campaign to mislead the public regarding the Kyoto Protocol Treaty, and successfully lobbied the Bush Administration to reject it. While some oil companies have taken first steps to invest in clean renewable energy, ExxonMobil remains the dinosaur of the industry, investing virtually nothing in renewable energy. It has attempted to discredit the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. A February 2001 ExxonMobil memo to the Bush White House asked if the United States' could help unseat Dr. Robert Watson, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's scientific authority on the issue. In April 2002, just as the ExxonMobil memo was made public, Watson was removed with the help of the US government delegation.
Find out more:
Denial and Deception: A Chronicle of ExxonMobil's Efforts to Corrupt the Global Warming Debate (report)
Full Report (pdf)
Summary (pdf)
Report Appendix (pdf)
www.greenpeaceusa.org
www.thealliancefordemocracy.org
www.seen.org
3. HUMAN RIGHTS: Develop and adopt a verifiable human rights policy with an explicit commitment to support and uphold the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Even by oil company standards, ExxonMobil's human rights record is appalling. It is being sued for complicity in human rights violations in Aceh, Indonesia, including allowing its facilities to be used for torture and interrogation. In Chad and Cameroon, citizen opposition to the environmental and social consequences of ExxonMobil's Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline has been met with brutal government suppression. In Colombia, an entire village was forcibly relocated last year to make way for the expansion of South America's largest open pit coal mine, majority owned by ExxonMobil's wholly owned subsidiary Intercor. ExxonMobil then sold Intercor to its minority owners. And when Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999, it became the first U.S. employer ever to rescind a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation.
Find out more:
ExxonMobil's
Human Rights Record (factsheet: pdf, 57 Kb)
www.amnesty-usa.org
4. ECOSYSTEM DESTRUCTION: Stop pursuing drilling and pipeline construction in pristine frontier lands and waters, such as the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge.
Some places of irreplaceable natural value, like the Arctic Refuge, should be off limits to oil and gas development. Yet ExxonMobil spent a staggering $7.9 billion last year on exploration and development, with much of it in pristine ecosystems, such as the Arctic Refuge and the sensitive habitat of the endangered Western Pacific Grey Whale off
the coast of Sakhalin Island, Russia. Some of West Africa's last untouched rainforests are threatened by ExxonMobil's Chad Cameroon pipeline, which is partially financed by US taxpayer dollars via the World Bank, while the company's proposed McKenzie pipeline may jeopardize important forests in Alaska and Canada. Thirteen years after the devastating Exxon Valdez catastrophe, Exxon, now ExxonMobil continues to betray the public trust by fighting at every turn payment of clean up costs for the tragedy. Last year it successfully overturned the punitive damages awarded against it. ExxonMobil must pay up and clean up for the ecological and human destruction it has caused world wide.
Find out more:
Ecosystem Destruction (factsheet: html or pdf)
www.uspirg.org
www.pacificenvironment.org
www.seen.org
5. COMMUNITY HEALTH: Eliminate the trespass of health threatening chemicals from ExxonMobil's refineries and facilities into communities where people live, work and play.
Domestically, ExxonMobil's refineries are often located near poor communities of color, who have little recourse against the devastatingly high levels of respiratory illnesses, cancer, and the resulting impoverishment of their communities. The refining of oil and the manufacture of gasoline, plastics and chemicals is the most polluting industry on the face of the earth. From cradle to grave, the oil and chemical industry uses and produces a wide variety of some of the most health destroying substances known to humankind. Under proposals now being considered by the Bush administration and supported by ExxonMobil, refineries will be able to dramatically increase their emissions by avoiding requirements for pollution controls. ExxonMobil operates the largest and most polluting oil refinery in the nation located in Baytown, near Houston, Texas. It has been investigated for violating a portion of the Clean Air Act that the company wants changed.
Find out more:
www.refineryreform.org
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The Stop ExxonMobil Alliance is a broad association of rights groups
working to influence ExxonMobil's behavior in the human
rights, environment, governance and community relations areas.
Alliance members support each others' demands but do not have
expertise or take public position on all the issue areas.
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