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Investors target Exxon, Massey For Lags On Climate

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A coalition of U.S. investors put companies including Exxon Mobil Corp and coal miner Massey Energy Co on a “Climate Watch” list on Wednesday, claiming the long-term competitiveness of the firms could be hurt by their lack of action on climate change.

“For a company in a major emitting sector … to not be thinking about how they are going to address a regulated environment creates red flags for investors,” Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmentalists, said in an interview.

Lubber said the companies have lagged in taking action on climate change even though U.S. President Barack Obama plans to regulate emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet.

“Companies that miss this trend will be setting themselves up to fail in the 21st century low-carbon economy,” she said.

Ceres, whose institutional investors associated with the Climate Watch report manage a total of $1.9 trillion in assets, said the companies lag behind their peers who have taken actions including moving into alternative energy markets like wind and solar power or assessing their climate change risks.

Ceres said Exxon Mobil Corp has been “unresponsive to investor requests for a decade,” on strategies on growing demand for diversified clean energy sources.

Exxon spokesman Chris Welberry said in a email, “We reject this criticism,” and that the company has led in energy efficiency investments to reduce emissions.

Ceres put Massey Energy on the list, saying it had resisted shareholder resolutions requesting the company develop and disclose a strategy for responding to climate change. The company did not immediately return a request for comment. Investors at Ceres, which also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk, a group of 75 institutional investors including the California State Teachers Retirement System, and financial firms focused on the business impacts of climate change, have filed 63 global warming resolutions with the nine companies on the climate list, and others.

TAR SANDS

The group also targeted companies investing in Canada’s tar sands, including Chevron Corp, which owns part of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project, and Canadian Natural Resources, one of the largest producers in oil sands.

Alberta’s oil sands rival Saudi Arabia’s conventional oil reserves in size, but environmentalists say mining and processing them releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases.

When Obama visits Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa on Thursday, energy will be a key topic in the talks. About 75 percent of Canada’s oil sands output is shipped to the U.S. market.

“Extraction of oil from oil sands is a risky proposition and will likely in the long term be a disaster for both investors and inhabitants of an increasingly warming planet,” said Margaret Weber, board chair of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which coordinates shareholder filings with Ceres.

Canadian Natural management could not be immediately reached and Chevron did not immediately return phone calls about the investments.

SIERRA SNOWPACK LEADS TO CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

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THE SKINNY ON PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES

(Source: NRDC, February, 2009) Is “BPA-free” the Same as Safe?
Not that long ago, reusable bottles made of clear, hard, polycarbonate plastic were the hippest water carriers to have, beloved by hikers and college students alike.

Then came a draft report from the National Toxicology Program in April 2008 about possible health risks from a chemical in the polycarbonate known as bisphenol A (BPA). Though it soft-pedaled the reasons for concern (there is actually an alarming amount of scientific evidence that BPA may be highly toxic), the news was widely carried in the media and the bottles’ appeal evaporated overnight.

In response, Nalgene, the manufacturer whose name had become synonymous with this type of bottle, announced it would phase out the product and replace it with a new model that was equally clear, hard, beautiful — and BPA-free.

So — problem solved.

Or was it?

The new Nalgene water bottle is made of a “copolyester” plastic manufactured by the Eastman company with the trade name Tritan. So are new bottles by Kor and Camelbak. All trumpet the fact that their bottles are BPA-free, with the implication that BPA-free is the equivalent of safe. But we have no way of knowing because the ingredients that make up Tritan have been kept secret. They could include another dangerous chemical…or not. Since the ingredients have not been identified, no one can say.

All we know about the Tritan bottles is that, like polycarbonate, they fall into the #7 category of “other” plastics in the identification system used to mark plastic containers. (The numbers appear inside a triangle of chasing arrows.) When it comes to 1 through 6, the numbers are relatively informative, but 7 is the mystery number. Here’s the lowdown on each:

#1 (PET or PETE) plastic is the kind used for bottled water bottles, which are generally regarded as safe. They have been shown to leach antimony into the water in a couple of studies, but at levels considered safe by the EPA. The scare about their leaching DEHA if reused, which you may have come across, turns out to be an urban legend. If there is any risk from reuse, it probably comes from bacterial contamination. (The bottles’ narrow necks make them hard to clean.)

#2 (HDPE), 4 (LDPE) and 5 (polypropylene) plastics are generally regarded as safe.

#3 (PVC) and 6 (styrene) plastics pose health risks and should be avoided. (They are not ordinarily used for water bottles, but are used for other food and beverage containers.)

#7 plastic is usually polycarbonate and contains BPA. If you are in love with a particular #7 bottle, you could call the manufacturer to identify the plastic, but that might not make matters clearer. Learning, for instance, that the plastic is Tritan would not tell you enough. The “better safe than sorry” approach would be to avoid #7 altogether in my opinion.
Despite the “generally regarded safe” remarks above, a recent analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of 10 products advertised as microwave-safe found that BPA leached into food from packaging labeled #1, 2 and 5. This analysis was part of ongoing coverage by the paper of chemicals in consumer products in a series called “Chemical Fallout,” which won the 2008 John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

If this leads you to feel queasy about plastic in general (I still use it, though never in the microwave), consider food-grade stainless steel for your water bottles. Klean Kanteen and New Wave Enviro are two companies that offer such products. Both provide a choice of caps made of stainless steel or plastic.

Some people object to the fact that these stainless steel bottles are manufactured in China because of the lethal contamination recently found in several products made there. If that concerns you, I suggest you call the bottle-makers (both American) and ask what steps they take to ensure their bottles are safe.

As to the popular aluminum bottles made by Sigg, they have a lining whose ingredients, like Tritan’s, have not been disclosed. Sigg does state categorically that tests show the lining does not leach BPA, and there is no reason to assume otherwise. But this is another case where a manufacturer could assuage doubts by being more forthcoming.

I wish I could tell you about the newer corn-based plastic bottles, but I haven’t been able to find enough information about them.

If none of these choices strike you as perfect — well, it’s not a perfect world. However, better health and safety regulations would help, starting with labeling requirements that tell the public what food and beverage containers are made of.

WORLD GLACIERS SHRINKING FOR THE 18TH STRAIGHT YEAR

Glaciers from the Andes to Alaska and across the Alps shrank as much as 10 feet, the 18th year of retreat and twice as fast as a decade ago, as global warming threatens an important supply of the world’s water.

Alpine glaciers lost on average 0.7 meters of thickness in 2007, the most recent figures available, data published today by the University of Zurich’s World Glacier Monitoring Service showed. The melting extends an 11-meter retreat since 1980.

“One year doesn’t tell us much, it’s really these long-term trends that help us to understand what’s going on,” Michael Zemp, a researcher at the University of Zurich’s Department of Geography, said in an interview. “The main thing that we can do to stop this is reduce greenhouse gases” that are blamed for global warming.

READ MORE: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=ajCBthQzAiU4&refer=home

U.S. Transition Hampers Talks on Climate Change

POZNAN, Poland — As ministers from 189 countries gather here in the coal mining regions of Poland to hammer out a new climate treaty, progress is being sorely hampered by the transition under way in American politics, delegates and experts here said. President-elect Barack Obama to attend these meetings — he has said there is but one president at a time, and the United States is still represented here by the Bush administration. But the anticipation of his presidency has left this critical meeting in a bit of limbo. “It has affected the meeting in a fairly significant way,” said Gus Silva-Chavez, a policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, who has been observing the closed negotiations. “A lot of people think: ‘This is not the time to put our cards on the table. Let’s wait for the new administration. Why agree to anything now?’ ” This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the European Union is itself struggling to finalize its own climate package this week — hampered by the global economic turndown — and so its delegates have been unusually quiet here.

The current negotiations are meant to culminate in a treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009, to take effect in 2013. It will replace industrialized nations’ commitments to reduce emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States never ratified that agreement.

It seems like there is a lot more work to do and that this meeting was a great opportunity to take a step forward that again, has been missed.

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Climate News

Investors target Exxon, Massey For Lags On Climate

SIERRA SNOWPACK LEADS TO CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

THE SKINNY ON PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES

WORLD GLACIERS SHRINKING FOR THE 18TH STRAIGHT YEAR

U.S. Transition Hampers Talks on Climate Change