The Spring 2016 proxy votes supporting the 2°C stress test resolutions at last week’s Annual General Meetings of ExxonMobil (38.2%) and Chevron (41%) give cause for both celebration – and concern. These votes suggest that key asset managers are recognizing (and others seem to be willfully ignoring) climate risk inherent in the business-as-usual practices of the largest U.S. oil and gas corporations and their downstream value chains.

Celebration is justified because these first-time proposals “drew more support than any contested climate-related votes in the history of the two biggest U.S. oil and gas companies,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which added that it is “an indication that more mainstream shareholders like pension funds, sovereign-wealth funds and asset managers are starting to take more seriously the threat of a global weaning from fossil fuels.”

A resolution at the Southern Company (an electricity public utility and the 3rd largest U.S. source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions) actually goes a bit further than stress testing and asks for management to disclose a 2°C transition plan. As a first time proposal, this resolution received 34% support. For those unfamiliar with the proxy voting system, it is exceedingly rare for first-year resolutions to receive support from more than one-third of voters. Indeed, votes don’t need to cross the majority-support threshold to catch the attention of management – companies often respond to resolution requests supported by a critical mass below half of voters.

The good news aside, these results are also cause for great concern given the high number of shareholders that did not vote in favor of these resolutions. Contrast the 2016 results at ExxonMobil (38.2%) with the actual vote for very similar resolutions filed in 2015 by the Aiming for A coalition at BP (98.3%!) and Royal Dutch Shell (99.8%). The difference between these results is more than 60% — which raises the question: what accounts for this spread?

Significantly, BP’s and Shell’s managements recommended support for the resolution, while ExxonMobil not only recommended voting against the resolution, but also petitioned the SEC for permission to omit the resolution in what has been characterized as an “unusually aggressive” effort. This suggests the missing 60% essentially rubber-stamped management’s recommendation. Moreover, this 60% almost surely contains institutional investors who voted in support of the Aiming for A resolutions at BP and Shell, which raises significant fiduciary duty concerns. While there may be other explanations, the most logical and likely explanation for this confoundingly inconsistent voting would seem to be: lack of the kind of independent thinking required by fiduciary duties of care and loyalty.

Nearly as confounding as this inconsistency was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s statement on the continuing need for fossil fuels to provide energy necessary for modern life, with fossil fuels still projected to supply 60% of the world’s energy needs in 2040. “The world is going to have to continue using fossil fuels, whether they like it or not … just saying ‘turn the taps off’ is not acceptable to humanity,” said Tillerson.

Consider the underlying logic of Tillerson’s statements. The CEO of the largest publicly owned fossil fuel company suggests that the desire of some individuals and corporations to continue to benefit from the sale and use of fossil fuels trumps the imperative to avoid catastrophic risks to us all. The implications of adhering to Tillerson’s views are sobering: Continuing to maintain an economy dependent on hydrocarbon combustion jeopardizes the very ecological foundations supporting humanity. Institutional investor Jeremy Grantham reminds us: “We should not unnecessarily ruin a pleasant and currently very serviceable planet just to maximise the short-term profits of energy companies and others.”