Pressed by activist investors to do more about climate change, Chevron Corp. CEO John Watson on Wednesday rejected calls to put a price on the greenhouse gases that come from burning his company’s products and insisted the world would need oil for decades to come. Speaking at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in San Ramon, and in comments to reporters afterward, Watson railed against what he called “command and control” policies to tackle global warming. [...] while Watson praised last year’s international climate agreement in Paris as “a good first step,” he argued that any attempt to set an international price for carbon dioxide emissions would hurt the world’s poor, who need affordable energy to improve their lives. Chevron investors rejected all of them, including proposals to set emission-reduction targets for the company or start counting Chevron’s worldwide reserves in terms of British thermal units as a way to encourage alternative-energy investments. While all oil companies are facing greater scrutiny over their role in climate change, Chevron so far has escaped the legal pressure now facing Exxon. Following reports last year that Exxon’s own scientists warned company executives about the dangers of global warming starting in the 1970s, 17 state attorneys general have launched investigations into whether the Exxon misled the public on the issue. In California, SB1161, a bill under active consideration by the state Senate, would extend the statute of limitations for companies that knowingly deceived the public on global warming. California’s own climate policies, he said, have raised energy prices, driven businesses out of the state and are “imposing huge costs on the people of California.” He noted that greenhouse gas emissions in the United States have fallen, thanks to natural gas produced “by the miracle of hydraulic fracturing.”