Is the gig up for junk shareholder activism?

It might well be, given the response from Big Oil shareholders, who voted down, bigly, a series of greenie 'sustainability' proposals.

According to Reuters:

HOUSTON, May 31 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) shareholders on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected calls for stronger measures to mitigate climate change, dismissing more than a dozen climate-related proposals at their annual meetings.

The results supported the two largest U.S. oil producers in resisting pressure from investor groups calling for the pair to follow European rivals in accepting tougher emissions reductions goals.

In other words, go woke, go broke, and the shareholders were having none of this.

Reuters noted that the green wokesters had managed to get support on some of their bills, with about a third of them going along with them last year. This year, the margin from even those was down by two-thirds.

"There is no single oil major that really wants to transition," said Mark van Baal, founder of activist group Follow This, which suffered resounding losses at several meetings. "They all want to hang on to fossil fuels as long as possible."

His group, which represents some 9,500 shareholders in oil and gas companies, had requested Exxon set medium-term goals for reducing emissions from fuels burned by customers - or Scope 3 targets.

That resolution received less than half of the support [with] 11% of vote cast compared with 27% from the group's emission reduction proposal last year.

That's pathetic.

This being Reuters, there's precious little reporting about why the shareholders would do something so politically incorrect. The activists got most of the news real estate, as if they were actually the protagonists here, instead of parasite-like nuisances who buy tiny shareholdings in order to be let in on the shareholder meetings and to be able to make their proposals. They're unimportant, and perhaps the major shareholders wouldn't talk to Reuters, but Reuters nevertheless treats the activists as if they're the main story.

The measures that got shot down by nearly 90% of the shareholders in some instances included:

Exxon holders rejected all 12 shareholder proposals, the majority of which dealt with climate-related issues. None received a majority of votes cast that would signal a win, according to early results.

Chevron investors also rejected proposals on customers' emissions reduction target, creating a board committee on decarbonization risk, and a report on worker and community impact from facility closures and energy transitions.

They sounded like good ones for the shareholders to give the back of their hand to.

In the past, they were more pliable to such virtue signalings, but this vote now suggests they've had a bellyful.

The Exxon Mobil CEO seems to have bucked up, too, coming out as Mr. Oil with no greenie jellyfishing whatsoever, calling the nuisance proposals for what they were:

CEO Darren Woods called Follow This "an anti-oil and gas" group using environmental and social objectives "to diminish the important role Exxon plays" in the industry.

"Scope 3 gives companies like ours, zero credit for reducing other's emissions through technologies such as carbon capture and storage," Woods said.

Since Reuters didn't seem to ask anyone why they voted against the greenie junk proposals, we are left to speculate, but it's not hard.

One, oil is the wave of the future, the best and most efficient fuel, and all you have to do is ask the Chicoms, who are laying out big cash for their deep-oil digging, which is the cutting edge of technology. I wrote about that here.

Two, it's the money, honey. Going woke doesn't add a cent of value to shareholders' portfolios. It doesn't help profits, it actually eats them, attempting to drive oil producers into way less efficient and less lucrative greenie schemes instead of doing what they're good at, which is pumping oil. Wind, solar and other kinds of green power "alternatives" are nowhere near as energy-dense or as efficiently produced as black gold. They also constantly require bailouts and subsidies to keep them afloat. How can that compare to oil, which is one technological revolution after another in horizontal drilling, deep sea drilling, and other innovations?

The shareholders seem to know this and are sticking with oil.

Three: Bud Light. The get-woke, go-broke dynamic is alive and well as the public feels its oats on the power of its boycott in the face of virtue-signaling maneuvers from the left. Maybe they didn't want to go down like Budweiser, Target, Kohl's, and other wokester companies by putting their votes in the public's faces. 

And now they're voting with their shareholder votes. Once upon a time, they were easy to get to sign on to whatever greenie proposal came down the pike. Something happened, though, something big, because the fact that two companies' shareholders reacted this way suggests a trend.

If so, it's good news for the American public, which just wants to see efficiently produced petroleum, The shareholders have led the way.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License