----- forwarded message ----- Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 11:38:53 +0200 From: secr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Greenpeace targets U.S. oil firms on climate change ----- forwarded message ----- Subject: [gaia-l] Greenpeace targets U.S. oil firms on climate change Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 20:39:50 -0300 From: "Mark Graffis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thursday, April 26, 2001 The environmental group Greenpeace said Thursday it would seek to hurt the businesses of five U.S. oil companies until they agreed to back an international treaty designed to slow global warming. Greenpeace said it would focus its campaign on Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Conoco and Phillips Petroleum and try to hurt their markets outside the United States until they withdrew their support for President Bush's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Greenpeace, whose activists twice occupied U.S.-owned oil rigs in the North Sea in recent weeks, did not specify what action it would take against the companies. "U.S. oil company directors have to make a decision about who means more to them, the consumers of their products who pay their salaries, or George W. Bush who takes their campaign contributions," Greenpeace International spokesman Steve Sawyer said in a statement. The Kyoto Protocol calls for industrialized countries to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Last month, Bush sparked an international outcry after the United States rejected the treaty, saying it did not require cuts by developing nations and threatened to damage the U.S. economy. The new Greenpeace moves followed its call earlier in April for the top 100 U.S. companies on the Fortune 500 list to declare their position on climate change. Amsterdam-headquartered Greenpeace said many companies claimed they did not have a position on the issue, but said 46 of the top 100 companies were members of the U.S. Council for International Business lobby group, which has said it supported Bush's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol. Copyright 2001, Reuters
