Exxon is on an epic corporate winning streak.

It has become the unlikeliest of faces of an unlikely shift in prevailing business winds, suing two of its own shareholders who pressed a ballot measure urging the company to speed up its carbon-emissions reductions. “That Exxon — Exxon — feels comfortable throwing its corporate might against a couple of low-budget activists says a lot about how quickly the political weather has changed” around ESG, I wrote at the time.

When the shareholders dropped their proposal and promised not to submit it again, Exxon moved ahead with its lawsuit anyway, doing away with any pretense that this was a narrow governance battle and not a corporate crusade. Last week a Fort Worth judge took the unusual…