Exxon Mobil Corp., the most prominent U.S. fossil fuel company, and one widely reviled for four decades of stonewalling action on and deliberate, deceptive obfuscation about the risks of climate change, has been booted off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In one of the most significant and revealing of moves in the last seven years, the Dow dropped Exxon, Pfizer Inc. and Raytheon Technologies Corp.  replacing them with Salesforce.com, Amgen Inc. and Honeywell International, which are now posed to enter the 124-year old equity gauge on September 1st, 2020.

This major rebalancing, supposedly triggered by the share split planned by Apple, muffles the very stark rejection of Exxon as a leading industrial player.  Not only has Exxon seen its market cap shrink, its profoundly unethical behavior, its clouding of scientific evidence and its refusal to take action to address the climate impacts of its fossil fuel products, have made it the darling of divesting shareholders, a movement that has become increasingly mainstream, especially as fossil fuel returns falter in the face of diminishing demand.

The DJIA has probably been looking for the right opportunity to dump Exxon for a while, avoiding the appearance of disfavor by doing so in proximity to a major extreme weather event or fossil fuel accident. Instead, the DJIA took advantage of the Apple split to justify what has likely been the plan to remove the fossil major, so prevent its decline from impacting the Dow Jones average.

Read more about this move at Bloomberg: "Exxon Booted from Dow Industrials in Major Embrace of Technology."