Shareholder Proposals: Pressing Business to Address Global Warming

Shareholder Proposals: Pressing Business to Address Global Warming - by Roy Chatalbash

There are examples of successful initiatives in which investors pushed businesses to address their energy usage. As a result, these businesses not only reduced their green house gas emissions, but also acknowledged that increasing shareholder value cannot be at the expense of the environment. However, most shareholder proposals rarely succeed in gaining majority support (largely due to the lack of voter participation). Indeed, environmental proposals gain only about thirty percent approval on average, according to Institutional Shareholder Services.

We at the Weston Climate Group encourage those of you who own stock to vote in favor of shareholder proposals that direct companies to deal with global warming. Even the threat of such a shareholder proposal can sometimes lead a business to change its ways. For example, ConocoPhillips agreed to join the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, an association of businesses supporting action to tackle climate change. In addition, it announced that it would invest over twenty million dollars in a research program that would synthesize new generation biofuels. These actions convinced the originators of one shareholder proposal to withdraw their initiative.

Since the Bush Administration has not seriously addressed climate change, we need to put pressure on companies to reduce their energy consumption. One simple way is to vote in favor of investor initiatives that force companies to deal with the issue. That means we have some work to do if we want to influence business to address the impending crisis of global warming.

Submitted by Roy Chatalbash, Weston Climate Group. We thank The Weston Town Crier for printing this article.