By FELICITY BARRINGER
July 12, 2005
New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 11 - A coalition of environmental and liberal lobbying groups is planning a boycott of Exxon Mobil products to protest the company's challenges to warnings about global warming and its support for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The boycott is part of a public relations campaign to brand Exxon Mobil, the nation's biggest oil company, as an "outlaw," the groups say.

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil said in an e-mail message that the company did recognize the risk of climate change. The spokesman, Russ Roberts, said Exxon Mobil had committed to "investments and strategic planning that address emissions today, as well as industry-leading research on technologies with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future."

But the company has also supported groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose work has challenged some generally accepted scientific models that predict the speed of climate change and the severity of its consequences.

On the question of Arctic drilling, Mr. Roberts wrote, "We believe that with more than 30 years of industry experience on Alaska's North Slope and with recent technological advancements, ANWR can be developed with little threat to the ecology of the coastal plain."

Energy enterprises have long provoked environmentalists' opposition over specific projects. But it has been a long time since one has been the target of a nationwide boycott.

Lee R. Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chief executive, has been an outspoken skeptic about the widely held view among climate scientists that human activity is responsible for the current warming trends.

Among the groups involved in the campaign, scheduled to begin on Tuesday with nationwide press conferences and a new Web site, www.exxposeexxon.com, are the U.S. Public Interest Group, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and MoveOn.org Political Action.

Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director, said the goal was either to get Exxon Mobil to change or "to encourage other oil companies" to improve their environmental stewardship. The company was chosen, organizers said, because its record is worse than its competitors'.

"The other oil companies have aspirations" for environmental performance, Mr. Pope said.