Total Criminal

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LET'S BRING THE CLIMATE CHAOS SPECULATORS TO JUSTICE

We are in the process of destroying the world as we know it. Our planet has already reached 1.5°C of global warming, and there’s no “turning back”. The climate machine is spinning out of control, but those who could stop it have a financial interest in continuing – and even accelerating – the recipe for disaster. Not all of us bear equal responsibility for this tragedy. There are indeed investors in climate chaos, who continue to bet on fossil fuels to maximize their profits, knowing full well that their choices are leading to the downfall of the Earth System. What is underway is the destruction of the biosphere, or a “globocide”. It’s as simple as that.

Such behavior is not only inhumane, it's criminal.

Their responsibility for accelerating climate change is greater than ours. They hold our lives in their hands and are consciously and knowingly deciding to destroy them.

Let's not let them continue to do so.

Today, we are taking TotalEnergies’ board of directors and its shareholders to court.
But not to just any court; we're taking them to the criminal court.
It's time that financial investors in climate chaos are punished for what they do: kill.

Millions of people have been put at risk and tens of thousands more have lost their lives because of TotalEnergies. Not to mention the billions of animals wiped out by climate disasters.

Add your voice to support our criminal complaint and let the speculators of climate chaos know that from now on, a civil barricade will always stand against their morbid decisions.

Together, let's take away their license to kill.

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We are taking legal action to make TotalEnergies liable for the criminal consequences of its decisions

Khanzadi

25 years old, Pakistan

“

Even though the flood's damage stays with us, it reminds us how strong we are when we work together. We won't let tough times defeat us. Instead, we'll keep going, aiming for a better future where nothing can dim our hope. (...)”

William

28 years old, France

“

We arrived at around 9am and discovered that my house had completely disappeared. There were no visible foundations; the 3-storey house had been replaced by the riverbed. I honestly had no words to describe what I was seeing and feeling at that exact moment. (...)”

Hilda

23 years old, Zimbabwe

“

That fateful night I realized that climate change is a human right issue. Many were deprived of their right to food, shelter, or proper clothing. It was a very painful experience seeing and thinking that my village, Chimanimani, was now a different place and would never be the same again. (...)”

Frank

29 years old, The Philippines

“

Odette's strong winds ripped off its roof, detached the main door from its frame, threw it several feet away, and shattered glass windows. In one instance, a corrugated sheet from the neighbor's house flew toward us. At that moment, I had already accepted my fate, thinking that we would die. (...)”

Jann

65 years old, Australia

“

Losing my house (along with 126 others in the town) was tough and none of us will forget that but it was the devastation to the environment and wildlife that broke my heart. For 2–3 weeks after the fires the sound of rifles rang out as animals with injuries considered fatal were released from their suffering (...)”

Elisa

38 years old, France

“

Two days before the storm, I had a video call with my mother, who showed me the raspberries she had picked from her garden, and I showed her twelve-day old grandson. The trauma caused by the brutality of this event is permanently ingrained in me. (...)”

Benjamin

17 years old, Belgium

“

While I will forever carry with me that I was unable to save Rosa, I am resolved to honor her memory by dedicating myself to preventing further tragedies. I will do everything in my power to combat the climate crisis and hold those responsible accountable. (...)”

Alexandros

24 years old, Greece

“

It is very scary that now, every year when the summer approaches, I am thinking: this may be now that my house, my neighborhood burn and that me and my family get injured, that we asphyxiate in the smoke. I really don’t want that to happen. (...)”

We are taking legal action to make TotalEnergies liable for the criminal consequences of its decisions

Khanzadi

25 years old, Pakistan

“

William

28 years old, France

“

Hilda

23 years old, Zimbabwe

“

Frank

29 years old, The Philippines

“

Jann

65 years old, Australia

“

Elisa

38 years old, France

“

Benjamin

17 years old, Belgium

“

Alexandros

24 years old, Greece

“

Total, death at heart

Rising sea levels, submerged coastlines, deadly heat waves, devastating wildfires and hurricanes, historic floods and spectacular landslides… There is nothing natural about these ‘natural’ disasters: they are fossil fuel disasters. In 50 years, they have increased fivefold and are growing exponentially in intensity and frequency as the big oil company TotalEnergies increases its profits.

The activities of multinationals, free of any ethical constraints, have deadly consequences on our lives. They can and must stop, because climate change is not inevitable: it is the result of institutionalized actions.

TotalEnergies has known about the direct link between its activities and climate change since the 1970s.

Back then, there was still a chance of avoiding the climate chaos into which we are now being thrown, but the executives and shareholders of the oil major made a different choice: to ignore science and invest in environmental destruction. They have gone even further to defend their profits: they have fought against scientific certainty. They have chosen the side of climate skepticism, lies, data manipulation and the torpedoing of public policies. They have become the relentless architects of a system designed to keep us dependent on oil and gas, when the energy transition should and could have been launched as soon as possible to avoid the worst possible scenario, and when they were best placed to implement it.

Now that it has finally become impossible to openly deny climate change, TotalEnergies has changed its strategy. The company now relies on greenwashing, saturating the public arena with messages that make it look like it has embraced the energy transition, while it continues to invest in fossil fuels at full throttle.

Instead of using its record profits, its technical expertise and the operational power of its thousands of engineers to invest in the transition, TotalEnergies continues to develop projects to expand fossil fuels.

Why? Because they are more profitable than renewable energies. That’s all there is to it.

Producing ‘green’ energy (solar, wind, hydropower, etc.) is profitable, but not as profitable as oil and gas. To maximize their already spectacular profits, the company’s shareholders and management are prepared to sacrifice the world as we know it. This is because the new gas and oil fields that TotalEnergies is developing around the world are climate bombs that chain our demand for energy services to their supply of hydrocarbons.

In other words, the executives and shareholders of TotalEnergies have made, and continue to make, a conscious choice to set our greenhouse gas emissions on an apocalyptic course. A group of individuals, a minority in number and unrepresentative of society because of their inordinate financial power, have made this cynical choice in order to maximize their already obscene profits and thus destroy humanity’s chances of avoiding the destruction of the world as we know it.

Their choices and their votes don’t just destroy lives. They destroy life.

There is only one word to describe their behavior, and that is: criminal.

Individuals and entities that knowingly choose to stubbornly pursue the morbid path of destabilizing our planet’s habitability bear a special responsibility for the destruction of our individual and collective destinies.

Fossil fuel speculators are above all responsible for climate tragedies and above all dangerous.

We must stop them.

We must curb their power to cause harm.

We must take away their license to kill.

We cannot allow a handful of criminally greedy highly privileged people to bury our future without a fight.

That’s why we are now taking TotalEnergies’ directors and main shareholders to criminal court.

Press kit

Registration as a civil party

15/05/25

NGOs and victims of climate change register as civil party in their criminal complaint against TotalEnergies

Press release

For the first time in the world, on May 21, 2024, an oil company, TotalEnergies, was the subject of a criminal complaint for its contribution to climate change, given the resulting impact on human and non-human lives. The Board of Directors and shareholders of TotalEnergies, the world’s sixth-largest oil and gas company, were charged with the offences of endangering the lives of others, involuntary manslaughter, failing to fight a disaster and damaging biodiversity. Beyond this, the intensifying consequences of global warming raise the question of the risk of widespread destruction of the biosphere, in other words of “globocide”.

Today, following the dismissal of this complaint by the public prosecutor of the Paris judicial court in February 2025, seven plaintiffs and two associations, BLOOM and Alliance Santé Planétaire, have registered as a civil party in this criminal complaint to trigger the opening of a judicial investigation. In the light of the evidence produced, we expect TotalEnergies and its directors and shareholders to be held responsible, as they have continually fuelled a climate-change strategy while at the same time engaging in the fabrication of climate doubt, all at the peril of human lives and biodiversity.

With TotalEnergies’ Annual General Meeting scheduled for May 23, 2025, the Board of Directors has decided not to submit the company’s climate strategy to a shareholder vote, a Say on Climate, as in previous years. Yet this strategy is incompatible with limiting global warming to +2°C – a horizon of vital importance for the stability of the Earth System, but already made impossible by the continued expansion of hydrocarbon exploitation by the world’s oil and gas majors, foremost among which is TotalEnergies. Since we filed our criminal complaint last year, Total has announced more than twenty new investments in fossil fuel extraction projects, while the International Energy Agency announced in 2021 that new fossil fuel projects are incompatible with limiting global warming to +1.5°C. Until 2030, TotalEnergies plans to invest nearly six billion dollars a year, or 33% of its total investments, in new fossil fuel projects. The objective of increasing oil and gas production by 3% per year condemns millions of human lives. Total is doing this in total impunity.

Over the last twelve months, climate catastrophes have intensified and multiplied all over the planet: : floods in Valencia, Spain, cyclone Chido in Mayotte and Garance on Reunion Island, hurricane Milton in Florida, gigantic fires in California, Bolivia and South Korea, record heatwaves in India and all around the globe… According to the UN, there is now more than one climate catastrophe every day. Two of the plaintiffs who are suing today have also been victims of new climate disasters since we filed our simple complaint in May 2024: Khanzadi Kapri relived the nightmare of the floods that forced her onto the roads of Pakistan in August 2024, while Frank Nicol Marba in the Philippines watched helplessly between October and November 2024 as six typhoons hit the archipelago in a record-breaking month.

A new dismissal would demonstrate the inability of the law, and therefore of our societies, to prevent the destruction of the world as it has been stabilized for thousands of years, and to prevent the billions of deaths associated with the annihilation of the Earth System in scenarios of over 2°C warming. Faced with over-powerful multinationals that hold the public sphere in their thrall and have the power of life and death over the human civilization, BLOOM calls on citizens to urge political leaders to support the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative.

Any new fossil fuel development project condemns the biosphere and humanity to irreversible destruction. A fair and equitable exit from fossil fuels is not the preference of a few, but a vital collective imperative. Preventing globocide is an existential question for mankind, and it is being played out today.

Hosting the United Nations Conference on the Oceans from June 9 to 13 in Nice, followed by the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement at COP30 in Brazil in November, is an opportunity for France to support the opening of negotiations for an international treaty on the non-proliferation of fossil fuels.

Notes to editor

Who does this case target specifically?

When a complaint concerns many potential responsible individuals or entities, the French legal system allows to file a complaint “against X”, leaving it to the prosecutor or investigating judge to decide whom to prosecute. In this instance, our group of plaintiffs is providing the Criminal Court with a rationale which targets the board of directors of TotalEnergies as well as its main shareholders.

The individuals and entities we have identified as having superior responsibility are:

• Mr. Patrick Pouyanné, TotalEnergies’ CEO.

• Members of TotalEnergies’ Board of Directors. They determine the Group's strategic direction, have an important role in decision-making on investments and asset acquisitions and disposals, and have consistently refused to put resolutions aimed at aligning the Group's strategy with the Paris Agreement on the AGM agenda or have openly called on shareholders to vote against them.

• TotalEnergies’ main shareholders for whom we have evidence that they have consistently voted in favour of climate strategies incompatible with limiting warming to 2°C (for example TotalEnergies’ 2022 climate plan) and against resolutions proposed by shareholders aiming at aligning the Group's climate strategy with the Paris Agreement (for example the 2023 “Follow This” resolution). These include for example Blackrock (Total’s largest shareholder with more than 6% of shares) and Norges Bank (Total’s 6th largest shareholder with about 3% of shares).

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