An unprecedented legal battle is being waged against the French energy and petroleum multinational TotalEnergies, in a bid to get the company to acknowledge its responsibility for climate disruption and its trail of disastrous consequences. According to Le Monde, charges were pressed against the French oil group before the Nanterre Judicial Court on Friday, September 22. It targets four serious offenses: failure to fight a disaster, manslaughter, unintentional injury to the integrity of a person, and destruction or damage to the property of others creating a dangering to people.
In contrast to the numerous lawsuits already brought against the multinational, the four organizations behind the charges (Sea Shepherd France, Darwin Climax Coalitions, Wild Legal and Stop EACOP) have this time decided to bring criminal rather than civil proceedings. "Civil proceedings don't intimidate managers," explained William Bourdon, the organizations' lawyer. "The only thing that bothers them is the risk of an indictment, a public trial, a criminal sanction and, ultimately, damage to their image."
When contacted, TotalEnergies said it was not aware of the complaint. "The company conducts its operations in accordance with its operational standards and applicable laws and regulations. It will respond to requests from the authorities if necessary," said the same source.
The complaint, which Le Monde had access to, concerns the offense of "failure to fight a disaster." The other offenses stem from this complaint. The organizations intend to demonstrate that TotalEnergies had the possibility of taking action against climate change, without necessarily ceasing all fossil fuel projects, but by limiting its investments in this sector. Instead, by continuing to develop new oil and gas infrastructures, contrary to the recommendations of scientists and the International Energy Agency (IEA), the group is contributing, in their view, to the worsening of a crisis that is endangering a large part of the world's population, who are victims of climate disasters.
Droughts, heat waves, fires, floods and storms are causing famine, disease and death. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), some 3.5 billion people live in areas particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming. The European Environment Agency has calculated that almost 130,000 Europeans died from heat waves between 1980 and 2020, and predicts around 90,000 deaths per year in the European Union under a +3°C scenario by 2100.
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