Chevron – Global Environmental Standards Report (2009)
WHEREAS The Chevron Business and Ethics Code places the highest priority on the safety of its staff, community members and the environment where it operates. Corporate Policy 530 “commits Chevron to comply with the spirit and letter of all environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, regardless of the degree of enforcement.” Our company operates in 180 countries, including Africa, Asia and Latin America nations where environmental regimes may be less protective of human health and the environment than in other countries where Chevron operates. CEO David O’Reilly has recognized the importance of our company’s relationships with oil producing nations …
What Goes Up Doesn’t Always Go Up
The latest disaster in the financial markets has once again shown that some of the biggest risks investors face derive from the excesses of free markets themselves. This time it was unregulated lending, leverage and speculation. In 2000 it was over-optimistic and at times corrupt Wall Street analysts, gobbling up creative corporate accounting that massaged income statements to show profits where there were none. Some of the other systemic risks embedded in financial markets are barely on the radar screen of most investors. These range from unregulated pollution causing global warming, to the worrisome increase in nuclear proliferation during the …
Home Depot and the Endangered Forests of Patagonia
Ancient forests in South America…Home Depot…environmental groups protest. It may sound like a Hollywood script about the timber battles of the 1990s, but unfortunately it describes the players in the latest chapter in the ongoing battle to protect remaining endangered forests in the world. In the heart of the Patagonia region of Chile, the multinational consortium of financiers, HidroAysén, is proposing to build five hydroelectric dams on the Pascua and Baker Rivers. The dams, if built, would flood two pristine rivers and nearly 11,000 acres of Chile’s most biologically rich forest, agricultural and ranching lands. Included in this area would …
Trillium Spearheads Effort to Protect and Enhance Shareholder Rights
Obama Administration has the Opportunity to Reverse SEC Policies that Censored Environmental and Social Inquiries The current financial and economic crisis demonstrates the extent to which all sectors and all participants in the market, whether companies, investors, employees, or communities, are interrelated and deeply affected by the actions of any one participant. Protecting and enhancing the rights of investors to seek and receive information from their companies about company activities improves the stability of the financial system as a whole. President-elect Barack Obama can help to avoid future market disruptions and also pave the way for a sustainable economy if …
Statement on Recent Developments in Aguinda v. Texaco
Trillium Asset Management Corporation Statement on Recent Developments in Aguinda v. Texaco December 4, 2008 Contact: Shelley Alpern (617) 292-8026, x 248 On November 26, 2008, the court-appointed expert charged with assessing Chevron’s liability for damages in connection with Aguinda v. Texaco raised that figure by two-thirds, from $16.3 billion assessed in April to $27 billion. Richard Cabrera had concluded in a 4,000 page report to the court last spring that 100% of Chevron’s former sites are extensively contaminated with cancer-causing toxins, and that an earlier clean-up Texaco claimed it had completed was ineffective. Texaco, which dumped more …
2008 Advocacy Review
For our 2008 advocacy efforts, we’re pleased to report a fair amount of progress — never as much as we’d like (we’d like superhero powers), but enough to confirm that shareholder activism remains a potent tool for change. Climate change. Our shareholder resolution at ConocoPhillips requesting a report on the environmental and social impacts of tar sands drilling won almost 28% of the vote, an impressive vote in this arena. Our resolution at Bank of America addressing its financing of coal-fired power plants and mountaintop coal removal was deemed inadmissible by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but we eventually …
Pressing FASB for Improved Disclosure on Social and Environmental Liabilities
This month, investors were presented with an unusual opportunity to weigh in on a proposed rule change designed to bring potential environmental and social liabilities to light. Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) is acutely aware that there is a long and troubled history of companies underestimating the likelihood of severe financial threats – Enron, the subprime lending crisis, and asbestos liabilities are three recent examples. All too often we have seen that these momentous issues were looming for many years and eventually resulted in catastrophic consequences for investors. In light of the significant concerns raised by the impacts of climate …
Big Coal Losing Momentum in the U.S.
Poor coal. For so long, it has gotten away with being the largest contributor (41 percent) to global CO2 emissions from energy use, a widespread public health hazard by virtue of lead, mercury and other pollutants, the source of black lung disease, and now we can add deforestation to its achievements. “Coal will be coal,” they said. “Isn’t it great that it’s cheap and abundant?” Coal claims that it’s now clean and has offered to change its ways by burying its carbon instead of spewing it all over the atmosphere, but its persecutors have obtained restraining orders and are bent …
Turn Down the Heat – It's Getting Warmer
With all the talk out there about energy efficiency and reduced use, I can’t help but think of my mom, telling us kids to put on a sweater, the heat would not go up. I laugh at the person I’ve become, as I tell my own kids the same thing, adding the environmental commentary that it’s one little thing we can do and if we don’t, climate change will turn up the heat more than we’d like – before we know it. So what’s a shareholder to do, in this day and age of climate change, when a company in …
Tar Sands Development Stickier Than Anticipated
In a rational global economy not entirely driven by short-term profit maximization, the collective body politic of all nations would have applied the precautionary principal to the threat of climate change twenty years ago. We’d now be celebrating the fruits of two decades of aggressive efficiency measures, phased down fossil fuel use, and the mass distribution of renewable energy technologies. Instead, we have the tar sands. Record oil prices and declining access to the oil and gas resources of nations such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Venezuela has led to a rush to develop Canada’s tar sands deposits. CIBC …
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