(Editor’s Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)

In January, Exxon filed a lawsuit to block a Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) resolution filing by Follow This and Arjuna Capital that sought to force steep cuts in the company’s CO2 emissions including from combustion of its products which they argued would force them to “change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely.”

As Follow This has made clear, “we buy shares in order to work on our mission to stop climate change, not to make a financial profit,” and to make producers “stop exploring for more oil and gas and start exploring for new business models.”

Although Arjuna and Follow This had subsequently dropped their SEC resolution (along with risks of legal damages if they lost), Exxon has nevertheless continued its lawsuit because, as it says, “the underlying issue remains and must be resolved.”

Follow This and Arjuna Capital aren’t alone in this Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) assault on hydrocarbon companies that currently provide more than 80% of U.S. energy by increasing wind and solar which account for about 3%.

California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) and Majority Action, another far-left organization, were among numerous shareholders who last week unsuccessfully voted to reject Exxon’s proposed slate of board officers, including Chairman-CEO Darren Woods and Lead Director Joseph Hooley.

While SEC’s longstanding rules let public companies block shareholder resolutions that affect a company’s “ordinary business operations,” its decidedly ESG-friendly Chair Gary Gensler has declined to let companies nix resolutions if they have a “broad societal impact.”

As stated in a friend-of-court brief in support of Exxon’s lawsuit issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, “Until the courts weigh in, activist investors will continue, with the SEC’s approbation, to inundate public corporations with proposals designed to push an ideological agenda divorced from the success of the corporation.”

After all, Arjuna and Follow This have both previously pursued unsuccessful resolutions against Exxon twice before.

Exxon has also survived relentless legal attacks funded by fifth-generation descendants of John D. Rockefeller Sr., founder of Standard Oil, the monopoly that begot their core business.

Thanks to enormous oil wealth, the Rockefeller Family Fund has financed more than 30 U.S. lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, with Exxon a defendant in all of them.

The Family Fund influenced President Biden’s decision in January to pause approval of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.

Fund staffers also consult with blue state attorneys general, nine of whom have brought cases against Exxon aiming to collect billions of dollars for their contributions to climate change and the damages caused by it.

One such “climate superfund” bill was recently approved by the Vermont legislature.

In addition to heading the Family Fund, Miranda Kaiser also sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a larger charity that has also financed climate litigation, founded by her brother David who died of brain cancer in 2020.

That same year, the Brothers Fund promised to spend $100 million to address climate change over the next 10 years.

In 2019, a New York state judge cleared Exxon on fraud charges in a case alleging the company misled investors about the impact of climate regulation on its business.

These charges were prompted by a series of stories released in 2015 by the Los Angeles Times and Columbia Journalism School and a separate series by InsideClimate News which had purportedly shown that Exxon had for decades internally modeled dramatic changes to the climate due to fossil fuel use.

The journalism projects had been quietly funded by Rockefeller charities, which provided more than $500,000 for their efforts.

Whereas after the stories ran, environmental groups launched a media blitz using the hashtag #Exxonknew, no scientific evidence exists backing any such modeled causation relationship.

In rebuttal, Exxon openly attacked the Rockefeller effort as a politically motivated conspiracy between Democratic attorneys general and environmentalists.

Nevertheless, the number of Rockefeller-supported climate-related cases against Exxon and other major oil companies continues to grow, including a City of Chicago suit in January and a Bucks County Pennsylvania suit in February.

Both were lobbied by The Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental group the Rockefeller charities helped to create.

Another Rockefeller prompted case brought by the Massachusetts attorney general accusing Exxon of misleading consumers and investors about its products’ contributions to climate change could go to trial by 2025.

Meanwhile, the Rockefellers and other climate vigilantes continue to support a torrent of anti-fossil Biden policies, including withholding of LNG export permits and banning of new drilling development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.

This is occurring as that same crony political bedfellow administration is raiding nearly 270 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower pump prices ahead of the November elections … just as they did ahead of the 2022 congressional midterms.

So, let’s encourage Exxon to wisely keep its leadership board intact to pursue their vital core business to restore U.S. energy independence we celebrated under former President Trump while the wisest among us work to replace the highly expendable one in the White House.

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