'Boycott Esso' call over attempt to oust green expert

Motorists across Britain are being urged by environmentalists to boycott Esso petrol stations following claims that their parent company collaborated with the Bush administration in a bid to undermine the world's most influential exponent of global warming theory.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth will today launch a poster campaign with the slogan "Don't buy Esso – it doesn't give a damn about global warming", to be followed by a picket at hundreds of Esso garages on 18 May.

The protest has been sparked by claims that ExxonMobil, which owns Esso, has urged George Bush – to whom it has made considerable party donations – to try to oust Robert Watson, the chairman of the 3,000-strong Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Mr Watson has been critical of US inertia over the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A memo from Randy Randol, Exxon's senior environmental adviser, to John Howard, assistant director of the White House Council on Environmental Policy, clearly shows Exxon's opposition to Mr Watson, a former adviser to Bill Clinton. Accusing Mr Watson, currently the chief scientist at the World Bank, of having a "personal agenda", the memo attacks his criticism of the US and asks: "Can Watson now be replaced at the request of the US?"

Finally, the Exxon executive recommends putting forward US representatives who have attacked global warming theories and concludes the Bush administration should "restructure the US attendance at upcoming IPCC meetings to assure [sic] none of the Clinton/Gore proposals are involved in any decisional activities".

Since receipt of the Exxon memo, dated 6 February 2001, the Bush administration has recommended that Dr Rajendra Pachuari of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi should replace Mr Watson. It said that recommendation was nothing to do with Exxon.

The revelations, made in The New York Times this week, have infuriated green lobbyists. "Esso holds a malign influence over the Bush administration," said Ben Stewart, a Greenpeace campaigner. "It is doing more than any other company to stop action on global warming." Mr Stewart said thousands of Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace activists will be mobilised on 18 May to picket Esso stations and recommend alternative petrol outlets.

"We're not telling drivers to get out of their cars," he said. "But if people have any interest in helping the planet, they will buy their petrol elsewhere."

A spokesman for Esso in London said the memo had been forwarded by Mr Randol, not written by him. "It was written by a third party who was neither an employee of ExxonMobil nor commissioned by it," the spokesman said. "Mr Randol forwarded it with the proviso that we would not identify the author. As a company, we do not have a view over Mr Watson's role." He said the Esso day of action was "the latest event in a year-long campaign designed to spread misinformation and smear our name".

¿ Esso, Total, Shell and Texaco said they had raised petrol prices at their UK garages in response to a dramatic surge in world oil prices. The increases, averaging 1p per litre come on top of a 4p hike last month.