Descendants of John D. Rockefeller sold their Exxon Mobil Corp. stock and plan to dump all other fossil-fuel investments in the latest move against the industry that made their fortune.
The Rockefeller Family Fund concluded there’s “no sane rationale” for businesses to explore for oil as governments contemplate cracking recorded on carbon emissions, based on an argument online of the New York-based philanthropic foundation Wednesday.
The fund singled out Exxon, the world’s biggest oil explorer by market value, for what it called “morally reprehensible conduct,” a mention of the a series of articles last year by InsideClimate News that alleged the oil titan knew about climatic change as far back as the 1970s and sought to cover what it knew from investors, policymakers and also the public. The Rockefeller Family Fund and also the Rockefeller Brothers Fund both of them are listed as financial backers of InsideClimate News on its website.
“It’s unsurprising that they’re divesting from the company since they’re already funding a conspiracy against us,” Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.
Exxon, which traces its roots to the 1880s and John D. Rockefeller’s integration of refineries and Pennsylvania oilfields, has dismissed the InsideClimate News allegations as products of “anti-oil and gas activists who cherry-picked documents” to distort the company’s role in climate research.
Fossil-fuel investments represent about 6 percent from the Rockefeller Family Fund’s US$130 million in holdings, Lee Wasserman, director of the foundation, said inside a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Bloomberg News
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