The boycott is part of a planned public relations campaign across the United States to brand Exxon Mobil, the country's biggest oil company, as an "outlaw," the groups say.

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, said in an e-mail message that it did recognize the risk of climate change. The spokesman, Russ Roberts, said Exxon Mobil had committed to "investments and strategic planning that address emissions today, as well as industry-leading research on technologies with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future."

The company has also supported groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose work has challenged some generally accepted scientific models that predict the speed of climate change and the severity of its consequences.

On the question of Arctic drilling, Roberts wrote, "We believe that with more than 30 years of industry experience on Alaska's North Slope and with recent technological advancements," the Alaska refuge could be developed "with little threat to the ecology of the coastal plain."

He said the company took no position on whether the resources in the refuge would warrant drilling.

Energy enterprises - among them oil and gas exploration companies, oil companies, electric utilities and even wind farms - have long provoked the opposition of environmentalists over specific projects, or prompted campaigns for shareholder resolutions.

But it has been perhaps a decade since the tactic of a nationwide boycott has been started against a single company.

Lee Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chief executive, has been an outspoken skeptic about the widely held view among climate scientists, endorsed by the science academies of 11 countries, that human activity is responsible for the current warming trends in the atmosphere.

The warming, many scientists believe, could change everything from the contours of coastlines to weather patterns.

Among the groups involved in the campaign against Exxon Mobil, which was scheduled to start on Tuesday with news conferences across the United States and a new Web site, www.exxposeexxon.com, are the U.S. Public Interest Group, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and MoveOn.org Political Action.

Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's executive director, said the campaign aimed either to get Exxon Mobil to change or "to encourage other oil companies" to improve their environmental stewardship. "The other oil companies have aspirations" for environmental performance, he said.