Three NGOs and eight individuals from around the world filed a lawsuit in Paris on Tuesday against the French oil giant TotalEnergies, its executives, and shareholders, accusing them of involuntary manslaughter or biodiversity damage.
Led by the NGOs Bloom, Planetary Health Alliance, and Nuestro Futuro, the plaintiffs aim to criminally charge the oil company and its top executives “for their contribution to climate change and its fatal impact on human and non-human lives,” according to a statement sent to AFP.
Three days prior to TotalEnergies’ annual general meeting, slated for Friday afternoon in La Défense, the complainants lodged their complaint on Tuesday morning at the Paris Judicial Court, which houses a division for public health and the environment. Their aim is to kickstart an investigation and, ultimately, proceed to trial.
In detail, the nearly 100-page document targets two other offenses: endangerment of others or failure to combat a disaster.
It singles out TotalEnergies, its board of directors, CEO Patrick Pouyanné, and some of its major shareholders such as BlackRock and Norway’s central bank Norges Bank, “who voted in favor of strategies” allegedly incompatible with climate protection.
Eight “survivors and victims of climate change” from France, Pakistan, Greece, Belgium, Zimbabwe, Australia, and the Philippines, who have been affected by recent catastrophes like devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022, storm Alex in France in 2020, or cyclone Idai in Zimbabwe, co-sign the complaint.
In Belgium, one of them, Benjamin B., now 17 years old and an environmental activist, “risked his life” in vain in the summer of 2021 to save his friend Rosa, then 15 years old, who died before his eyes, swept away by record floods in northern Europe.
For the plaintiffs, “TotalEnergies has been aware of the impact of its activities since at least 1971” but has since “followed a climate-skeptic line to (…) protect its growing investments in fossil fuels.”
Specifically, oil and gas whose emissions from their combustion warm the planet.
In terms of biodiversity, TotalEnergies is accused of playing a role in the mutilation and destruction of protected coral species in the French Antilles or in the planned disappearance of the common lizard.
Claire Nouvian, founding director of the ocean-focused NGO Bloom, coordinating and financing the legal action, states in the statement that “allowing (TotalEnergies, its executives, and shareholders) to continue would be to give them a right to +globocide+. It is unthinkable. That is why we are determined to stop climate criminals.”
“Although the International Energy Agency recommended stopping all new fossil fuel projects from 2021 in its 1.5°C scenario (compared to the pre-industrial global average temperature), TotalEnergies has continued to open oil and gas sites around the globe,” the press release asserts.
The plaintiffs recall statements from August by Patrick Pouyanné: “I stand by my oil and gas investments because demand is growing. I respect the opinion of scientists, but there is real life.”
“The executives and shareholders of TotalEnergies are fully aware that climate change is killing, yet they have made the cynical choice to increase oil and gas production for one reason only: to maximize profits,” the plaintiffs further accuse.
In addition to this procedure, TotalEnergies faces several legal actions, criminal or civil, in Paris or Nanterre in particular, initiated by NGOs on climate, environmental, and social issues, some of which have been rejected. This ranges from accusations of “climate homicide” to “greenwashing,” through human rights abuses…
TotalEnergies, whose direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions represent about 1% of global emissions according to the plaintiffs, aims for carbon neutrality by 2050, one of the conditions according to climate experts to meet the most demanding objective of the 2015 Paris Agreement to stay below the 1.5°C threshold.
But its emission accounting methods in this regard are contested by environmental activists.