Eight people from seven different countries filed lawsuits this week in Paris against the board of directors of French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies and its shareholders, who they accuse of a series of crimes, including manslaughter, linked to the group’s role in contributing to climate change.
The individuals – from Australia, Belgium, France, Greece, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe – are all separately related to victims of climate change in the form of heatwaves, megafires, severe flooding and storms, and argue that as one of the biggest carbon emissions producers in the world, TotalEnergies has a responsibility for the events they have suffered from.
They are joined in the legal action, filed on May 21st, by Bloom, a Paris-based association for the protection of maritime environments, and which launched the collective complaint, along with Alliance Santé Planétaire, a French association which campaigns for the recognition of climate change as a threat to public health, and Mexican environmentalist NGO Nuestro Futuro.
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The contents of the lawsuits, which Mediapart has seen and which run to several hundred pages, accuse TotalEnergies variously of manslaughter, of placing a person’s life in danger, of voluntarily failing to take measures to prevent an event placing lives in danger, and of damaging biodiversity. The first three are offences under French criminal law, while the latter contravenes French environmental law. All carry a minimum one-year prison sentence and a fine.
A group long made aware of the damage it was causing
The number of extreme weather-related disasters has multiplied by five over the past 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Association, and are phenomena mostly driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which account for close to 90% of CO2 emissions.
In the lawsuits filed this week, and based on the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the US NGO Climate Accountability Institute, it is detailed that TotalEnergies is, in the period since 1965, one of the 20 biggest carbon emissions-producing groups, and that the multinational knew since 1971 of the damaging impact its activities have on the climate.
The complaints also underline that while the International Energy Agency has since 2021 advised the immediate halt of development of any new fossil fuel extraction project in order to tackle climate change, TotalEnergies has continued to launch or expand oil and gas extraction activities at sites around the world.
“All the combustible fossils are responsible for the deaths of millions of people,” commented Yamina Saheb, an engineer, economist and lead author with the IPCC. “It is already the case today, but that will only get worse with the rise in temperature. Each euro invested in combustible fossils is a euro invested in climate crimes.”
Simon Frémaux, a general practitioner and coordinator for the association Alliance Santé Planétaire, one of the plaintiffs, underlined: “Climate change is the greatest health emergency in the world. TotalEnergies and the other oil and gas companies are perfectly well aware of what they are doing. Once you are conscious of what you are doing, you can’t say that you’re not responsible.”
The lawsuits also seek to demonstrate the very real, tangible links between greenhouse gases and extreme weather events.
The mother of French plaintiffs Elisa, 38, and William, 28 (last names withheld), plaintiffs from France, died during Storm Alex, an extratropical cyclone that struck France at the end of September 2020 and which, their complaint details, has been scientifically attributed to climate change.
A Belgian plaintiff, Benjamin (last name withheld), cites the death of his friend Rosa, 15, in the severe flooding that devastated parts of Belgium and north-west Europe in July 2021. The lawsuit refers to a scientific study that found that climate change had rendered that flooding event up to nine times more likely than during pre-industrial conditions.
A complaint filed by Pakistani plaintiff Khanzadi (last name withheld), 25, concerns the death of her sister in the devastating 2022 floods from extreme rainfall and which left about a third of Pakistan under water. Her lawsuit cites another scientific report which concluded that climate change had increased the intensity of that deadly monsoon rainfall by as much as 50%.
After a study of the voting at TotalEnergies’ annual general meetings, the plaintiffs point to the responsibility of the group’s senior management and shareholders by voting against the alignment of the multinational to the emissions target set by the Paris Climate Accords of 2015. “The decisions taken by the board of directors and the shareholders of TotalEnergies prove that those who have a financial interest in the destruction of the world are not apt to make responsible decisions, even when they know that they will have an impact not only on the lives of others, but on life full stop,” said Claire Nouvian, founder and head of Bloom.
The action this week against TotalEnergies is just one of what the UN Environment Programme reported last year to be more than 2,000 legal procedures worldwide against states or corporations concerning climate change events. A recent example is a lawsuit against TotalEnergies filed on March 13th by Belgian cattle and crops farmer Hugues Falys, who accuses the group of being responsible in part for the successive extreme weather conditions that caused financial and crop losses, and suffering of his animals, during the period 2016-2022.
“I am here to defend the honour of my mother, who died because of a climate-induced catastrophe,” declared French plaintiff William in his lawsuit. “The choices that TotalEnergies and its shareholders will make during the general assembly will have a decisive impact on our lives to come.”
The group’s next annual general assembly is on May 24th.
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- The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse