CORE Press Release May 28, 2004
by Congress of Racial Equality
Congress of Racial Equality
May 2004
For Immediate Release
Contact: Niger Innis
May 28, 2004
212-598-4000
Shareholder activists violate human rights,
CORE charges at ExxonMobil annual meeting
“I am delighted that shareholder activists are making human rights and corporate social responsibility keynote topics at this meeting,” Congress of Racial Equality senior policy advisor Paul Driessen commented at ExxonMobil Corporation’s 2004 annual shareholders meeting in Dallas this week. “But I am dismayed that they are politicizing these issues – and ignoring the fact that the policies they promote are resulting in unconscionable human rights violations.”
The Sierra Club, Christian Brothers Investment Services and other activist groups “are using false claims about pollution and catastrophic global warming to justify trying to stop fossil fuel and hydroelectric projects in poor countries,” Driessen pointed out. Over 2 billion people in those countries still do not have electricity, and millions die every year from diseases that would largely disappear if they did have electricity.
They oppose DDT and other pesticides – helping to guarantee that 300 million people get malaria every year, and 2 million die. They also battle biotechnology – ensuring that malnutrition and starvation continue to strike down millions of children every year, and leave others so weak that they die of diseases they would likely survive if they had better nutrition.
In so doing, he stressed, they are violating these poor people’s “most basic human right, their right to life. This isn’t ethical or socially responsible. It’s lethal eco-imperialism.”
Led by several groups purporting to represent Catholics and other Christians, activists once again used the ExxonMobil meeting to introduce resolutions that allowed them to speak out on environmental, executive compensation and other issues. They appeared “stunned and uncomfortable,” as Driessen and other speakers repeatedly challenged them on human and civil rights grounds, said John Nunes, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Dallas. Nunes also took issue with claims made by the activists.
“They don’t want to recognize these human costs, and up to now they haven’t had to,” said Niger Innis, national spokesman for CORE. “The human costs are staggering, and will no longer be ignored or tolerated. It’s morally wrong for these activists to promote environmental goals on the backs, and graves, of the world’s poorest and most powerless citizens.”
“We implore these groups, and their allies: Instead of demanding that corporations adopt your narrow definition of environmental ethics and corporate social responsibility, re-examine your own policies and programs,” Innis said. “The lives of millions hang in the balance.”
Last year, Niger Innis and CORE National Chairman Roy Innis addressed the shareholders. They were both pleased that Driessen could address the shareholders this year.
As Driessen noted in his remarks, the Sierra Club is a $100-million-a-year business, and receives significant funding from George Soros, wealthy foundations like Pew and Tides, and numerous people who don’t realize how much their desire for a pristine environment is hurting millions of people. The groups offering shareholder proposals at the ExxonMobil meeting are part of an $8-billion-a-year global industry that likewise promotes environmental purity at the expense of poor Americans, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans.
They utilize terms like sustainability, the precautionary principle, environmental justice and corporate social responsibility, to pressure companies and governments into adopting their political agenda, without adequate regard for the unintended, but inevitable consequences.
“But the world’s poor don’t need sustainable development,” said Driessen, author or Eco-Imperialism: Green Power · Black Death. “They need sustained development. They have a right, and must have a chance, to join the ranks of the world’s prosperous people.”
To improve their health and living standards, they need fossil fuels, hydroelectric projects, biotechnology and pesticides. Modern technology and greater prosperity will also improve their environment, because they will no longer have to cut forests for fuel, pollute the air by burning wood and animal dung, or plow under so much wildlife habitat for their subsistence farming.
Poor people in developing countries don’t need treaties and policies that protect healthy, affluent Americans and Europeans from distant, theoretical, exaggerated or imaginary risks, Driessen and Innis emphasize. They need policies that safeguard poor families from the real, immediate, life-threatening risks that confront them every single day.
They should have the right to make their own decisions about energy and economic development, the use of pesticides and biotechnology, and how best to safeguard and improve their health and well-being. They should not have decisions forced on them by bureaucrats, rich foundations and environmental pressure groups in wealthy developed countries that long ago conquered the malaria, tuberculosis, malnutrition and other problems facing poor nations.
“What these environmental and shareholder activists are promoting is contrary to basic Judeo-Christian standards of ethics, humanity, morality and social responsibility. It’s a human rights violation of massive proportions,” Driessen noted in his Dallasremarks.
“We all want and need to protect our environment,” Innis emphasized upon his return from the just-concluded World Health Organization’s 57th annual assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. “But doing this is not cheap, or free. The questions are: How much must we pay? Who pays? And who gets to decide who pays? When the environmental problems are exaggerated or even illusory – and the costs are being borne by the world’s poorest people – these questions become even more compelling.”
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is one of America’s oldest and most respected civil and human rights organizations. It has consultative status with the United Nations and also participated in the 2003 World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
CORE has an office in Liberia and has been active in African and Caribbean affairs for many years. One of its primary goals – which it hopes many more corporations, foundations, people and environmental organizations will now begin to share – is to restore scientific and economic objectivity, morality and humanity to environmental programs and policies.