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Dear John,

A sea change is happening before our very eyes in investor engagement on the climate crisis. With the 2021 season of annual shareholder meetings in full swing, investors are demanding dramatic action from companies—and getting results. During just the past two weeks, shareholders voted in record high numbers for a series of climate-related and environmental shareholder proposals. In some cases, they voted nearly unanimously.

Just consider:

98% of General Electric shareholders voted for a proposal seeking details of how the company will achieve net-zero emissions across its operations and products
99% of Bunge Ltd shareholders voted to ask the company for a stronger no deforestation policy
81% of DuPont shareholders voted to seek a stronger plastics pollution policy and disclosure on how much plastic the company releases into the environment

Even more remarkably, shareholders at some big U.S. oil majors won majority votes in recent days on three climate proposals—that’s equal to the number of majority votes on climate proposals in the entire history of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

At ConocoPhillips on Tuesday, 58% of shareholders approved a measure asking the oil major to go beyond reducing part of its emissions to cutting them to net zero all the way through to how its products are used. Then on Wednesday, a majority of Phillips66 shareholders voted to ask the company to set emissions reductions targets as well as for a proposal seeking a report on how Phillips66’ lobbying aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

So what's happening? All of these winning shareholder proposals add up to a dramatic sign of rapidly changing investor expectations for climate action.

And Climate Action 100+ investor signatories—which are responsible for $54 trillion or half of the managed assets in the world—are acting on their pledges to engage with the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. And more key votes are ahead.

Coming up are the annual meetings of U.S. oil majors ExxonMobil and Chevron. Climate Action 100+ investor signatories have been engaging with these companies for years and now a sizable handful of influential pension funds and asset managers have publicly backed an alternative slate of board directors for ExxonMobil.

Let’s give this effort all we’ve got.