Bill Gates presents himself as a climate champion, but his trust has actually increased its fossil fuel investments since his divestment pledge. It’s just the latest example of the billionaire appointing himself to solve problems he helps perpetuate.
These are for profit public companies, they are legally required to prioritize profits over anything else. Even if you had a controlling stake if you tried to push through something that would decrease profits, like lowering fossil fuel production, or even adding expensive carbon capture methods that would cut into the bottom line, the rest of the shareholders could sue you.
You’re talking bullshit.
You have voting weight proportional to how much stock you hold. You are the shareholder. There’s no legal obligations for companies to prioritise profits over anything else.
Stop with the fear mongering and hyperbole.
Public for profit companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. When you issue shares of a company you are signing a contract to put the companies needs over anything else when administering the company.
If it just worked off proportional representation like you imagine then the majority shareholder could unilaterally sell the company off to themselves for pennies or do self dealing to enrich themselves at the companies expense. No one would ever invest in a company because they could never be sure their interests would be met unless they had a controlling stake.
Companies need a goal in order to judge the administration by and to be able to call foul if they stray from that goal to pursue personal interests. For most public companies that is profit, and if you stray from that goal for your own personal interests, even if it’s a noble one like preventing climate change, the other shareholders can sue you for that. They didn’t sign up for your personal moral ambitions, they signed up to make money and they have a contract that says so.
If you want to pursue things other than profit you can register as a public benefit corporation which can consider things like climate change in there decision making process without risking a lawsuit from shareholders. This changes the agreement between the shareholder and the company so the shareholder knows that they aren’t going to make the most money at all costs. None of the major oil companies are registered that way though.
Read up on the duty of loyalty here before calling bs and thinking you can change big oil from within