To counter the effects of global warming, the burning of fossil fuels must be reduced and phased out over the next 30-40 years.
While other companies are already putting (token) amounts of funding into researching and developing renewable energy, Esso arrogantly refuses.
Instead, the company plans to spend 100 billion on oil and gas exploration in the next 10 years, promoting oil dependency and shirking reponsibility for climate change.
Worse, Esso aggressively lobbies against any attempt to reduce oil dependancy - especially in in its biggest market, the USA. It spent years vilifying the Kyoto protocol, which it claims is "unrealistic and economically damaging".
Esso convinced the Bush administration to pull out of the Kyoto protocol in 2001. In February 2002, Bush released his "alternative" to the agreement. The document was effectively Esso's wish list - it mirrored every single company policy on climate change.
Not content with developing US climate policy, Esso also tries to sabotage international action on global warming. The worlds' leading climate scientists, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - are Esso's favourite targets.
Esso instigated the removal of the chair of the IPCC, Dr Bob Watson. Within days of Bush entering the White House, Esso sent a memo asking, "Can Watson be replaced at the request of the US?" The answer was "Yes!". Dr Watson was removed.
It even pressured the IPCC to remove a sentence from one of its reports that linked climate change to oil and other fossil fuels. The IPCC held firm.
As recently as 2002, Esso was still saying the world needs to research global warming for 20 more years before it begins to reduce fossil fuel pollution.
Esso's unblemished record of sabotaging attempts to tackle climate change, and pushing the US to become even more dependent on oil, makes it the worst oil company of all.
Join the one million people in the UK who don't buy Esso.
