Sprinkled with debate over pollution and the company’s human rights record, Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s shareholders rejected all proposals at their annual meetings. Chevron CEO David O’Reilly told one group that its report on Chevron’s policies “deserved the trash can.”

Chevron’s shareholder meeting was much more eventful than Exxon’s as hundreds of protesters gathered outside, blocking the entrance. Protesters claim that Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, poisoned large areas of rain forest in Ecuador by dumping billions of gallons of waste, causing cancers and birth defects. Chevron said that Texaco spent $40 million on environmental cleanup and had been cleared of liability by the Ecuadorean government.

Proposals at Chevron for say on pay and a more detailed human rights policy were rejected. Exxon’s shareholders rejected a total of 11 resolutions, including separating the roles of chairman and CEO, say on pay, and detailed environmental plans to avoid climate change.

Exxon shareholders took the microphone to both negate the validity of global warming as well as provide support for it.

A rejected proposal asking for a detailed compensation report, presented by Mary Mather from an executive money management firm in Boston, asked why CEO Rex Tillerson’s compensation was so high in 2008. Such a report was voted down with only 11.6 percent voting for the measure and 88.4 percent voting against.

The shareholder activist group, the Sisters of St. Dominic, had previously sent proposals to both Exxon and industry peer Chevron, but withdrew the Chevron proposal yesterday.

“Basically these companies are night and day in terms of the distinctions on how they are handling and preparing for the future,” said Patricia Daly, who represents the Sisters.

Exxon has announced plans to improve its energy efficiency through changing its operations, but has come short of changing its product offerings. Exxon advised its investors to vote against the minority proposal made by the Sisters.

Skyrocketing summer oil prices were responsible for profits throughout the oil industry, with oil peaking at $147/barrel in July. Even when oil subsequently nosedived to sub-$40/barrel levels, the industry still retained record profits for the year.

Bloomberg reported that the combined revenues of Exxon Mobil and competitor Chevron surpassed the gross domestic product of all but 16 of the world’ nations.

Exxon’s Q4 profits of $7.82 billion were less than a third of last year’s profits during the same quarter.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based company said Thompson is retiring at the request of its board of directors.

Lanty Smith, who replaced Thompson as chairman last month, was named interim chief executive.

Ben Jenkins, the vice chairman and head of Wachovia’s retail and business bank, was named interim chief operating officer.

In the statement, Smith said “a series of previously disclosed disappointments and setbacks cumulatively have negatively impacted the company and its performance. The board believes new leadership will help to revitalize and reenergize Wachovia, and enable it to realize its potential.”

None of the executives was immediately available for further comment, according to a Reuters news report.Thompson joins a growing list of top banking chief executives to lose their jobs since the global credit crisis began last summer, including Citigroup’s Charles Prince and Stanley O’Neal, formerly of Merrill Lynch.

Increasing loan losses pushed Wachovia in April to raise $8.05 billion in capital. It cut its dividend, posted a first-quarter loss that it later nearly doubled to $708 million, and disclosed up to $1.14 billion of costs for legal and regulatory problems.

Some of the resolutions are attributed to shareholder concerns that companies are not doing enough to disclose product toxicity risks that are well known internally.

Activist victories were the subject of CERES, a coalition of investors lobbying for environmental causes. Bennett Freeman, head of social research and policy at the Calvert Group, said the investment firm had filed resolutions on climate change disclosure at 10 companies this proxy season; six of them—Big Lots, Lowes, Kirby, Ryder, Continental Airlines, and Harley-Davidson—subsequently agreed to produce climate change reports rather than face a proxy fight.

Each of these companies has agreed for the first time to disclose “specific steps that they’re prepared to take to address climate change risks, as well as opportunities,” Freeman told Compliance Week in a story published earlier this week. “This is all taking us closer toward our goal, which is comprehensive disclosure of climate change risk across the whole S&P 500.”

In addition, Calvert has filed resolutions with the airline industry that call for corporate strategy focused on greenhouse gas emissions.

“We’ve been frankly disturbed by the lack of quality in reporting by U.S. domestic airlines, so we want to try a different approach and see if it will pass muster by senior management,” he said.

Chevron was among the big oil companies taken to task by shareholders at its annual meeting this week where activists urged company officials to take responsibility for the environment and the human costs of oil production.

The California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) also pledged for the first time this year to file proposals on climate risk, “which is important to us,” CalSTRS spokesman Brian Rice told CW. The fund recently negotiated with Dynegy Corp. to prepare a report on the feasibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from existing and proposed power plants, Rice says.

The agreement comes as Dynegy is proposing to build as many as six new coal-fired power plants in the United States, which will be especially vulnerable to emerging carbon-reducing regulations.