With last year's $36 billion profit, Exxon Mobil was America's most valuable company. Until it got hammered in the market on Wednesday.

But the company's problems don't end there.

Presiding over his first annual meeting last week, new CEO Rex Tillerson shrugged off investors' concerns about climate change.

"We will not jeopardize our ability to provide excellent dividends and performance to our shareholders," Tillerson said. "We are not going to invest in lower-return projects."

Since Tillerson took over from champion climate change denier Lee Raymond, the company has been trying to change its image. But that's just public relations spin. Meaningless and empty.

Tillerson has made it clear that climate change will not be part of Exxon Mobil's bottom line calculations. Nothing has changed.

No surprises then that the company has now declined a request from pension fund trustees in seven states and New York City to discuss global warming.

How different is that from Paul Anderson, chairman of Duke Energy coming out with his call on the US government to tax companies based on the greenhouse gases they pump into the atmosphere?

Anderson's idea is really an extension of natural justice, the "polluter pays" principle. And he's one of a growing group of business leaders concerned about rising temperatures.

Not that Exxon Mobil would be concerned. Well, for now.

Australian scientist Tim Flannery describes his terrifying vision of the future in his book The Weather Makers:

"Some time this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all natural factors. Then, the insurance industry and the courts will no longer be able to talk Acts of God, because even the most unreasonable of us could have foreseen the consequences. Instead, the judiciary will be faced with apportioning guilt and responsibility for human actions resulting from the new climate. And that, I think, will change everything...If big coal, big oil and their allied interests continue to prevent the world from taking action to combat climate change, we may soon have an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control. The only way to avoid both tyranny and destruction is to act as America's Founding Fathers did, by swiftly heeding the call to action and by ceding just enough power to a higher authority to combat the threat. And this will only be effective if we act now, before the crisis becomes full blown".

As Tillerson is now discovering, it's an issue that won't go away and no PR spin will change that.