Getting Big Oil to act on climate change

Why this is important and what we’re doing about it

The UN climate science body, the IPCC, released a landmark report in October 2018 (find out more here). It confirmed everything we knew already: to avert the worst consequences of climate change, the oil industry needs to massively scale down its investments in fossil fuels.

Failing to align Big Oil with the low-carbon transition quickly threatens the livelihoods, homes, and jobs of millions of people across the world. Encouragingly, the IPCC also highlighted the potential for non-state actors such as institutional investors, civil society, and scientific institutions to get together and organise for change – a strategy that has been at the core of ShareAction’s campaigns for years.

Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 (find out why here). We believe that investors in these companies hold the key to solving climate change.

But a company’s carbon footprint is only half of the story. Many companies influence action on climate change by lobbying governments – both directly and through their trade associations. This is why we are challenging Big Oil companies to do two things:

• Develop a plan showing how they will align their business model with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement; and
• Lobby positively for a well-below 2°C world.

We use a toolkit of tactics to ensure this is taking place. Our toolkit starts with detailed analysis and research of Big Oil’s progress towards the low-carbon transition and then incorporates asking challenging questions at Annual General Meetings (AGMs) (find out more here), connecting pension schemes with members concerned about climate change, coordinating letters from investors concerned with Big Oil’s movement on climate change, as well as filing shareholder resolutions to encourage more ambitious progress.

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