Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ENERGY & UTILITY POLICY (90%); LETTERS & COMMENTS (90%); OIL & GAS PRICES (89%); ENERGY EFFICIENCY & CONSERVATION (78%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (73%); COMBUSTION TECHNOLOGIES (73%); AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY (72%); GLOBAL WARMING (72%); AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY & ENVIRONMENT (72%); PRICE INCREASES (70%); GASOLINE PRICES (63%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (59%); TAX INCENTIVES (53%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (66%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (66%)
PERSON: THOMAS L FRIEDMAN (95%); JOHN F KENNEDY (57%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (91%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); FLORIDA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%); CHINA (79%)
LOAD-DATE: June 1, 2008
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DOCUMENT-TYPE: Letter
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The New York Times
June 1, 2008 Sunday

Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; THE CHATTER; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 191 words
''I personally apologize.'' James E. Cayne, chairman of Bear Stearns, during a meeting with employees, investors and directors on Thursday, the day shareholders of the battered firm approved its merger with JPMorgan Chase. His words, and others like them, were met with dead silence.

''We were shocked.'' Michelle Finholdt, on a ruling in December by the Minnesota Supreme Court that her nonprofit day care agency had to pay property taxes because, in essence, it gave nothing away. The decision has sent tremors through the nonprofit world.

''Exxon Mobil needs to reconnect with the forward-looking and entrepreneurial vision of my greatgrandfather.'' Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, an economist and greatgranddaughter of John D. Rockefeller. Some members of the Rockefeller family are asking Exxon Mobil to look for alternatives to spewing greenhouse gases into the air.

''You can buy a lot more with your money today than before.'' Joanna Eliza, a recent graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, on clothing prices. Clothing is one of the few items in the Consumer Price Index for which overall prices have declined since 1998.

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SUBJECT: MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS (90%); TALKS & MEETINGS (90%); PERSONAL FINANCE (78%); SHAREHOLDERS (77%); NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS (75%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (72%); SUPREME COURTS (71%); PRICE CHANGES (65%); FASHION & APPAREL (65%); CONSUMER PRICES (50%)
COMPANY: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (91%); BEAR STEARNS COS INC (58%); EXXON MOBIL CORP (57%)
TICKER: JPMC (BRU) (91%); JPM (NYSE) (91%); JPM (LSE) (91%); 8634 (TSE) (91%); BSC (NYSE) (58%); XOM (NYSE) (57%)
INDUSTRY: SIC6022 STATE COMMERCIAL BANKS (91%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING AND SECURITIES DEALING (58%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (58%); NAICS325110 PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURING (57%); NAICS324110 PETROLEUM REFINERIES (57%); NAICS211111 CRUDE PETROLEUM & NATURAL GAS EXTRACTION (57%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (58%); NAICS551111 OFFICES OF BANK HOLDING COMPANIES (91%); NAICS523999 MISCELLANEOUS FINANCIAL INVESTMENT ACTIVITIES (91%); NAICS522110 COMMERCIAL BANKING (91%)
PERSON: JAMES E CAYNE (91%); JAY ROCKEFELLER (70%); JIMMY CAYNE (91%)
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The New York Times
May 31, 2008 Saturday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
Billboards That Look Back
BYLINE: By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1413 words
In advertising these days, the brass ring goes to those who can measure everything -- how many people see a particular advertisement, when they see it, who they are. All of that is easy on the Internet, and getting easier in television and print.

Billboards are a different story. For the most part, they are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by -- their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person's gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon.

The goal, these companies say, is to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it -- to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy.

''Everything we do is completely anonymous,'' said Paolo Prandoni, the founder and chief scientific officer of Quividi, a two-year-old company based in Paris that is gearing up billboards in the United States and abroad. Quividi and its competitors use small digital billboards, which tend to play short videos as advertisements, to reach certain audiences.

Over Memorial Day weekend, a Quividi camera was installed on a billboard on Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle in Manhattan that was playing a trailer for ''The Andromeda Strain,'' a mini-series on the cable channel A&E.

''I didn't see that at all, to be honest,'' said Sam Cocks, a 26-year-old lawyer, when the camera was pointed out to him by a reporter. ''That's disturbing. I would say it's arguably an invasion of one's privacy.''

Organized privacy groups agree, though so far the practice of monitoring billboards is too new and minimal to have drawn much opposition. But the placement of surreptitious cameras in public places has been a flashpoint in London, where cameras are used to look for terrorists, as well as in Lower Manhattan, where there is a similar initiative.

Although surveillance cameras have become commonplace in banks, stores and office buildings, their presence takes on a different meaning when they are meant to sell products rather than fight crime. So while the billboard technology may solve a problem for advertisers, it may also stumble over issues of public acceptance.

''I guess one would expect that if you go into a closed store, it's very likely you'd be under surveillance, but out here on the street?'' Mr. Cocks asked. At the least, he said, there should be a sign alerting people to the camera and its purpose.

Quividi's technology has been used in Ikea stores in Europe and McDonald's restaurants in Singapore, but it has just come to the United States. Another Quividi billboard is in a Philadelphia commuter station with an advertisement for the Philadelphia Soul, an indoor football team. Both Quividi-equipped boards were installed by Motomedia, a London-based company that converts retail and street space into advertisements.

''I think a big part of why it's accepted is that people don't know about it,'' said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.

''You could make them conspicuous,'' he said of video cameras. ''But nobody really wants to do that because the more people know about it, the more it may freak them out or they may attempt to avoid it.''

And the issue gets thornier: the companies that make these systems, like Quividi and TruMedia Technologies, say that with a slight technological addition, they could easily store pictures of people who look at their cameras.

The companies say they do not plan to do this, but Mr. Tien said he thought their intentions were beside the point. The companies are not currently storing video images, but they could if compelled by something like a court order, he said.

For now, ''there's nothing you could go back to and look at,'' said George E. Murphy, the chief executive of TruMedia who was previously a marketing executive at DaimlerChrysler. ''All it needs to do is look at the audience, process what it sees and convert that to digital fields that we upload to our servers.''

TruMedia's technology is an offshoot of surveillance work for the Israeli government. The company, whose slogan is ''Every Face Counts,'' is testing the cameras in about 30 locations nationwide. One TruMedia client is Adspace Networks, which runs a network of digital screens in shopping malls and is testing the system at malls in Chesterfield, Mo., Winston-Salem, N.C., and Monroeville, Pa. Adspace's screens show a mix of content, like the top retail deals at the mall that day, and advertisements for DVDs, movies or consumer products.

Within advertising circles, these camera systems are seen as a welcome answer to the longstanding problem of how to measure the effectiveness of billboards, and how to figure out what audience is seeing them. On television, Nielsen ratings help marketers determine where and when commercials should run, for example. As for signs on highways, marketers tend to use traffic figures from the Transportation Department; for pedestrian billboards, they might hire someone to stand nearby and count people as they walk by.

The Internet, though, where publishers and media agencies can track people's clicks for advertising purposes, has raised the bar on measurement. Now, it is prodding billboards into the 21st century.

''Digital has really changed the landscape in the sort of accuracy we can get in terms of who's looking at our creative,'' Guy Slattery, senior vice president for marketing for A&E, said of Internet advertising. With Quividi, Mr. Slattery said, he hoped to get similar information from what advertisers refer to as the out-of-home market.

''We're always interested in getting accurate data on the audience we're reaching,'' he said, ''and for out-of-home, this promises to give a level of accuracy we're not used to seeing in this medium.''

Industry groups are scrambling to provide their own improved ways of measuring out-of-home advertising. An outdoor advertising association, the Traffic Audit Bureau, and a digital billboard and sign association, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Association, are both devising more specific measurement standards that they plan to release by the fall.

Even without cameras, digital billboards encounter criticism. In cities like Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, outdoor advertising companies face opposition from groups that call their signs unsightly, distracting to drivers and a waste of energy.

There is a dispute over whether digital billboards play a role in highway accidents, and a national study on the subject is expected to be completed this fall by a unit of the Transportation Research Board. The board is part of a private nonprofit institution, the National Research Council.

Meanwhile, privacy concerns about cameras are growing. In Britain, which has an estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras -- one for every 14 people -- the matter has become a hot political issue, with some legislators proposing tight restrictions on the use and distribution of the footage.

Reactions to the A&E billboard in Manhattan were mixed. ''I don't want to be in the marketing,'' said Antwann Thomas, 17, a high school junior, after being told about the camera. ''I guess it's kind of creepy. I wouldn't feel safe looking at it.''

But other passers-by shrugged. ''Someone down the street can watch you looking at it -- why not a camera?'' asked Nathan Lichon, 25, a Navy officer.

Walter Peters, 39, a truck driver for a dairy, said: ''You could be recorded on the street, you could be recorded in a drugstore, whatever. It doesn't matter to me. There's cameras everywhere.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: OUTDOOR ADVERTISING (91%); CABLE TELEVISION (77%); TELEVISION RATINGS & SHARES (77%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (77%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (75%); PRIVACY RIGHTS (72%); LAWYERS (64%); MONITORS & DISPLAYS (54%); TERRORISM (50%); COMPUTER SOFTWARE (77%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (92%); LONDON, ENGLAND (50%) NEW YORK, USA (92%) UNITED STATES (92%); ENGLAND (50%); UNITED KINGDOM (50%)
LOAD-DATE: May 31, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: June 3, 2008

CORRECTION: A picture caption on Saturday with an article about billboards equipped with cameras that gather details about passers-by reversed the identifications, in some editions, for two men shown looking at a billboard. Rick Rivera is at the left; Nathan Lichon is at the right. The article also misstated the name of an industry association that is devising standards to measure the impact of advertising methods like digital billboards and signs. It is the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau, not the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Association.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Nathan Lichon, top left, and Rick Rivera are drawn to an electronic billboard in Manhattan. The ad, above, is equipped with a camera that gathers details on passers-by.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY HIROKO MASUIKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. C1)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The New York Times
May 31, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Michelangelo For Readers With Deep Pockets
BYLINE: By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 798 words
DATELINE: BOLOGNA, Italy
The gala presentation of ''Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano'' (''Michelangelo: The Wise Hand''), a volume of photographs of this Renaissance master's sculptures, may well have been the most lavish book debut in history.

With Piazza Maggiore, Bologna's main square, as the backdrop, a short video depiction of the volume, which can be seen on www.fmronline.it, was followed on Thursday night by an hourlong spectacle that included dozens of costumed dancers, a string quartet playing from a stage suspended in midair, suckling pigs roasted over a pit, a fake snowfall and a foppishly dressed acrobat walking Spiderman-style up the facade of San Petronio, the city's cathedral.

But then, this is no ordinary book, starting with its retail price of 100,000 euros, or around $155,000, at Friday's exchange rate.

Included in the price of what its publishers are calling ''the most beautiful book in the world'' is a sleek black case, its own stand and a 500-year guarantee.

''This isn't an appliance,'' Marilena Ferrari, chairman of the book's publisher, Gruppo FMR, told Bologna's mayor and guests at the book's official presentation in a grand salon in City Hall on Thursday morning. ''That's the amount of time we feel we can guarantee the materials we used to craft it.''

Using the high standards of the privately published books in the 19th century -- an ideal known as the ''book beautiful'' -- as a starting point, FMR sought expert artisans from various fields to create something Ms. Ferrari described as ''a work of art in itself.''

Aurelio Amendola's black-and-white photographs were printed on paper made exclusively for the project. There are detachable reproductions of Michelangelo drawings on handmade folios created according to centuries-old traditions. And then there's the cover: a scale reproduction in marble of the ''Madonna della Scala'' (''Madonna of the Steps''), a bas-relief of the Virgin and Child sculptured by Michelangelo when he was still in his teens. The original is housed in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.

It took two white-gloved attendants to lug around the 46.2-pound book at its City Hall debut.

The marble cover was the trickiest aspect of production.

''It was difficult to find the right depth,'' said Nanni Tamar, the project's production manager. Six sculptors of marble are working on the first 33 copies in a limited edition of 99. ''We broke a lot of slabs along the way,'' Mr. Tamar said.

This isn't the most expensive book ever made. There are books incorporating precious metals or gemstones that increase the price, like that of the entrepreneur Roger Shashoua, whose memoir, ''Dancing With the Bear,'' according to its Web site, dancingwiththebear.com, comes in a diamond-encrusted ''special oligarch'' edition that ranges in price from $1 million to $6 million.

Luxury publishing in general seems to be on the upswing. ''From my experience, it's growing,'' said Ovais Naqvi, chief executive of Gloria, a new luxury publisher that this year came out with a book about New York City that sells at $2,500 to $15,000.

''There are a certain amount of people who are testing how far the market can be pushed,'' Mr. Naqvi said.

Because production of the Michelangelo book is so labor-intensive (Ms. Ferrari likened the process to a Renaissance workshop), aspiring buyers can expect a six-month wait, the same as for a Ferrari (the car), said Pietro Tomassini, FMR's commercial director.

''We think it will sell out in a very short time,'' he said. Customers in the United States, Europe and Russia have already reserved copies, he added, though he declined to say how many.

Cristiano Collari, the book specialist for Christie's auction house in Milan, was a little taken aback by the price, which he said was comparable to that of good copies of rare ancient texts like the ''Hypnerotomachia Poliphili'' (1499), which he described as the ''bibliophile's prime fetish.'' But even contemporary art books can turn out to be good investments, Mr. Collari said, though the market is always hard to predict.

For this first title in its ''Book Wonderful'' series -- apart from a forthcoming book about Catherine de Medici, the rest are top secret -- FMR chose to pay homage to Michelangelo and to time its publication to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the first painted stroke on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican, which took place in May 1508.

The question remains, who would pay so much for such a book?

Franco Negretto, a financial consultant here who was awed by Thursday night's spectacle -- ''I've seen a lot of shows in this square, but this was one of the best'' -- said he'd been sold by FMR's pitch, despite the price tag.

''I'll do everything I can to buy it,'' he said solemnly.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SCULPTURE (90%); ART & ARTISTS (89%); CITIES (88%); BOOK PUBLISHING (77%); ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (77%); STRINGED INSTRUMENTS (70%); EXCHANGE RATES (68%); PUBLISHING (89%)
PERSON: MADONNA (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: ITALY (57%)
LOAD-DATE: May 31, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The new Michelangelo book has a limited edition of 99. (PHOTOGRAPH BY FMR) (pg. B13)

A photograph of Michelangelo's ''Pieta'' by Aurelio Amendola from the art book ''Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY AURELIO AMENDOLA/FMR)(pg. B13)

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The New York Times
May 31, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

At Exxon's Can't-Miss Meeting
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; TALKING BUSINESS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1664 words
There were storms around New York on Tuesday evening, and we sat on the runway for hours. I was heading to Dallas for Exxon Mobil's annual meeting, which had become this year's ''can't-miss'' meeting, especially if you are a reporter.

For the first time ever, several members of the Rockefeller family were going to use the annual meeting to publicly criticize the company founded by their patriarch, John D. Rockefeller. His great-granddaughter, Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, the co-director of the Global Development and Environmental Institute at Tufts University, was planning to offer several shareholder resolutions concerning global warming on behalf of a handful of family members. A larger group of Rockefellers was backing a nonbinding resolution, put forth by the shareholder activist Robert Monks, calling on the company to separate the roles of chairman and chief executive. Meanwhile, Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon Mobil's imposing C.E.O. (and, lest we forget, board chairman) was going to give a rare press conference after it was over.

Waiting for my plane to go wheels up, I pulled out The New York Review of Books; an article by the great physicist Freeman Dyson had caught my eye. It was a review of two books about global warming. Mr. Dyson argued that while there is clear scientific evidence showing that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen steadily, it does not necessarily mean that the end is nigh. Mr. Dyson talked soberly about the economic trade-offs involved in various solutions to cut carbon emissions, and agreed with the Yale economist William Nordhaus, author of one of the books under review, that some of the most radical solutions (especially some from Al Gore) would be ''disastrously expensive,'' and would damage the global economy.

Even more striking was his view that the science surrounding the havoc global warming would one day wreak on the planet was far from settled. He posed the real possibility that a low-cost solution would eventually manage the problem. He concluded that environmentalism had become ''a worldwide secular religion ... holding that we are stewards of the earth''-- which for the most part was a good thing.

''Unfortunately,'' Mr. Dyson added, ''some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of the planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment.''

So bitter and passionate, it turns out, that global warming can divide families. Even the Rockefellers.

Last year was another fabulous year for Exxon Mobil. It made a record $40.6 billion in profits. It replaced its reserves, no easy task with oil so hard to find and extract these days. Its safety record was stellar. Its return on capital was an astounding 32 percent, another record. It spent $21 billion in capital investments while also paying out $36 billion on a combination of dividends and stock buy backs. It share price rose 22 percent.

You can argue, as many do, that this performance is nothing more than a case of holding out the umbrella while it rains money -- that it's all due to the dramatic run-up in the price of oil. But it's a lot more than that. Exxon Mobil's competitors are operating in the same environment, and they can't touch its performance.

As he laid out the company's results during a 45-minute speech that opened the annual meeting, Mr. Tillerson kept using the word ''discipline.'' ''By maintaining discipline and rigor in everything we do'' the company would continue to outperform the competition, he said, for instance. Discipline and rigor are indeed at the heart of the company's engineering culture, and have a lot to do with why Exxon Mobil is so successful. When you're spending literally billions of dollars building a refinery in China, as Exxon Mobil is, you can't afford to be sloppy. ''I wish our government were run as efficiently as Exxon Mobil,'' said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst with Oppenheimer & Company.

That discipline is drummed into Exxon Mobil executives very early -- which gets at another characteristic of the company: it is extremely insular. Like most Exxon Mobil executives, Mr. Tillerson signed on in his early 20s and never left. And that bugs its critics. Many of those who spoke out against the company at the annual meeting -- including Ms. Goodwin -- talked about the need to bring ''fresh perspectives'' to the board. That, she said, was why she and other Rockefellers supported the resolution to bring in an independent board chairman.

''Their strength is that they are an inward-looking company with discipline,'' said Mr. Monks, who has sponsored his independent chairman resolution for a half-dozen years. ''Their weakness is that they are an inward-looking company with discipline.'' He's got a point; the same qualities that make Exxon Mobil the world's best producer of oil and gas also cause it to be a terrible articulator of its own message. Its executives really only feel comfortable when they're speaking to each other.

But let's be honest here: gaining fresh perspective is hardly the primary reason the dissident Rockefellers got behind Mr. Monks's resolution. The Monks proposal was a stalking horse for the issue that matters most to them: global warming. Most of the members of the family who are critical of Exxon Mobil are staunch environmentalists, who feel that ''their'' company should be doing more -- much, much more -- to help the world move to alternative sources of energy. Here they are on far shakier ground.

During his presentation to shareholders, Mr. Tillerson laid out Exxon Mobil's core belief: despite climate change concerns, and efforts to come up with alternatives to oil, ''there would be enormous growth in energy demand,'' he said. And, he added, oil and gas would still supply over 60 percent of that demand in the year 2030. When it was her turn to speak, Ms. Goodwin passionately objected to that forecast.

Exxon Mobil's projections ''depend on two critical but untested assumptions,'' she said, reading from notes. ''First, developing countries will enjoy strong economic growth. And second, global consumption of oil and gas will significantly increase. This second assumption is wrong.'' In her view, there was a high likelihood that new technologies would reduce the world's reliance on oil and gas -- and Exxon Mobil would suffer because of its stubborn refusal to spearhead new technologies back when it still had a chance.

What's more, she added, if Exxon Mobil turned out to be right, and demand for oil and gas continued to grow for the next quarter century and beyond, that would bring about its own set of disastrous results -- namely the environmental consequences of global warming. ''It will cause weather disasters,'' she predicted. ''It will have a huge and harmful effect on the global economy upon which Exxon Mobil depends.''

What she and the other family members seem to really want is for Exxon Mobil to begin taking steps to transition away from the thing it does better than any entity in the world: find and produce oil. But where is it written that oil companies should be the ones to lead us into the promised land of alternative energy? The world doesn't work that way. Transforming technologies will most likely come from innovators who have never set foot in an oil company, and don't have an oilcompany's baggage. Expecting Exxon Mobil to move the world to an oil-free future is a little like expecting buggy-whip manufacturers to invent the automobile.

What the Rockefellers were trying to do at the annual meeting is push Exxon Mobil toward their belief system -- their global warming religion -- and that is a place the company is unwilling to go. Its hard-headed view is that it is doing the most good for the most people by finding the oil and gas the world is going to need for the foreseeable future -- and that global warming is not likely to lessen that need. Realistically, I find that notion difficult to disagree with.

As for Ms. Goodwin's prediction of weather catastrophe, it could certainly happen. But it might not. We just don't know enough yet. It would be lovely if we had new technologies that made the world much less reliant on oil but that's not likely. India and China, just for starters, desperately need more energy to fuel their ambitions, and it is hardly fair to ask them to halt their economic progress -- nor are they likely to do so. The best we can hope to do is dampen our need for oil -- with such things as hybrid cars -- by making, continual, small, practical breakthroughs. Believe it or not, Exxon Mobil has scientists working on precisely those kinds of practical breakthroughs.

In the end, most shareholders agreed with Exxon Mobil. And why not? If a company's stock price is its report card, then Exxon Mobil is getting straight A. Ms. Goodwin's primary resolution, calling for the company to produce a climate change report, got only 10.4 percent of the vote. Mr. Monks's resolution got 39.5 percent -- about the same as last year. The Rockefeller support made zero difference.

At his press conference afterward, Mr. Tillerson was asked about global warming. ''My view is that climate change policy is so important to the world that to not have a debate on it is irresponsible. We don't know everything about it. Nobody has this figured out. Anybody who tells you they have this all figured out is not telling you the truth. We have to understand that climate change policy, whatever it turns out to be, is going to hurt some people. But let's at least have an open debate about it, so everybody knows what the facts are.''

Would that the Rockefellers had said something as sensible -- and as disciplined -- as that. Maybe next year.