The corporation has also agreed to pay off the fines originally awarded by a jury that the judge later reduced from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. They also will pay for the creation and enforcement of a marine reserve in Prince William Sound, where the 11 million gallon oil spill occurred, killing much of the region’s wildlife.
In a press conference this morning at Exxon’s headquarters in Texas, CEO Rex Tillerson admitted, “We tried to avoid taking action on climate change by funding climate skeptics and by claiming that more scientific study was needed. We were fully aware of the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence showing the need for serious emissions reductions. We regret being a powerful obstacle to real solutions and political progress, and are grateful to be forced to act responsibly.”
Since 1998, Exxon has spent in excess of $23 million funding a small army of denial scientists, amplifying their voices and injecting them into the media and policy arenas. But today Tillerson claimed that they were immediately withdrawing all funding from every one of these organizations.
Last year Exxon finally admitted, in their Corporate Citizenship Report, that these organizations were causing problems for action on climate because their “position on climate change could divert attention from how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.” Tillerson said today that this was “the understatement of the year,” and went on to say: “We have been at the heart of U.S. inaction on climate change for more than a decade, but today this comes to an end.”
Last year’s funding of two of the world’s most outspoken skeptics, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, was a “travesty,” he said, and had caused him sleepless nights. “It’s a relief to get rid of them, to be honest. I hope they shut up now.”
As the world’s largest publicly traded company, Exxon has no choice but to act on the demands from the majority of their shareholders. Tillerson ended his announcement by saying, “It became clear at the E.U. Heads of State meeting in June that world leaders were taking a stand against fossil fuels. Ever since then our share values have been falling beyond what any of us were expecting. By the time Copenhagen came around, we knew we had to make significant changes, literally overnight.”
Recently an independent opinion poll of Exxon shareholders revealed that 89 percent of them were not only concerned about their imminent loss of profit due to increasing political support for renewable energy, but that they were infuriated with Exxon for lying to them about climate change and funding climate skeptics for so many years.
In another astonishing turnaround, Exxon also announced that they have voluntarily agreed to pay the full $5 billion in punitive damages that was ordered by a trial jury following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Even though an appeals court reduced this amount by half and a further appeal ruling by the United States Supreme Court lowered it to $500 million, Exxon has now insisted on paying the original fine.
“It’s the 20th anniversary of the spill this year and we realize that sufficient reparations are long overdue,” said an Exxon spokesperson at a press conference this afternoon in Anchorage, Alaska. “We would also like to fund the creation and enforcement of a no-take marine reserve in Prince William Sound to protect this fragile marine environment from any future oil spills and to prohibit any form of commercial exploitation. We are currently working on this project with President Obama and expect to open the marine reserve in 2010. It will be called the ‘ExExxonerated Ocean Park.’”
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