THE CARBON WAR

166
The Winning of The Carbon War
London, 16 th April 2015
BP’s Annual General Meeting, at the Excel Centre. An exercise, for Carbon
Tracker, in helping to rack up the pressure on the company from its shareholders.
A consortium of those shareholders, led by Helen Wildsmith of the CCLA, fund
managers for the Church of England, has submitted a resolution which will be
the focus of shareholder action today. Special Resolution 25 reads “To direct
the company to provide further information on the low carbon transition.” It
contains a range of climate transparency goals. The hope is that in forcing the
company to conduct an open analysis of the risks to its business from climate
change, it will be encouraged internally by staff, and externally by investors
awakening to the problem, to join E.ON and position for energy transition.
A similar resolution has been tabled at the Shell AGM. To the surprise of
campaigning shareholders, both companies have agreed ahead of the AGMs
to support the resolutions themselves. The general expectation is that they
did not want the negative publicity that would come with rejecting a simple,
reasonable, request, preferring the option of agreeing to report, then stalling
and obfuscating during the process.
Outside the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands, I pose for a picture
with a team from Share Action, another shareholder campaign group much
involved in planning today’s exercise. We stand behind a banner. “Give climate
change a seat at the table”, it reads.
It is time to enter the building. I people-watch as I queue at security. Very
many of the shareholders are over 70, I observe.
I see obvious private security types, with tell-tale earpieces, cruising the
crowds in some numbers. One smartly dressed young woman is taken by the
arm by an earpiece man and a woman with a clipboard, removed from a queue,
and walked towards the exit. I ask who she is and what is going on. She is Sue
Dhaliwal, and she protested about climate change inside an earlier AGM. She
will not be allowed into this one, I am told.
A man who might be Samoan is also attracting attention from the earpieces
and clipboards. I ask who he is. Derrick Evans, resident of Turkey Creek,
Louisiana. He represents coastal communities affected by the Gulf of Mexico
oil spill.
When I enter the main hall, BP CEO Bob Dudley is giving a speech to
the hundreds assembled. Fifteen directors sit with him on the stage.
Dudley does not say anything you wouldn’t expect a CEO of modern
BP to say.