NGOs and victims of climate change register as civil party in their criminal complaint against TotalEnergies
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.
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:
The full press kit is downloadable here: https://www.totalcriminal.org/pdf/press-kit-an2.pdf
Today, three NGOs, BLOOM (France), Alliance Santé Planétaire (France), and Nuestro Futuro (Mexico) and eight climate change victims filed a criminal case in Paris against TotalEnergies’ board of directors and main shareholders for their contribution to climate change and its fatal impact on human and non-human lives. In the context of intensifying climate disasters and just three days before TotalEnergies’ Annual General Meeting, this legal action could set a precedent in the history of climate litigation as it opens the way to holding fossil fuel producers and shareholders responsible before criminal courts for the chaos caused by climate change.
TotalEnergies, the world’s sixth biggest carbon major, its board of directors and its main shareholders are being sued for deliberately endangering the lives of others, involuntary manslaughter, neglecting to address a disaster, and damaging biodiversity. Each offense is punishable by at least one year of imprisonment and a fine. The prosecutor will have discretion to open a judicial investigation and to determine the roster of individuals facing prosecution. Nonetheless, the complaint filed today targets the board of directors of TotalEnergies, which determines the Group’s strategic direction including its CEO Mr. Patrick Pouyanné, as well as its main shareholders who voted in favour of climate strategies incompatible with limiting global warming to 2°C and against resolutions aiming at aligning the Group’s climate strategy with the Paris Agreement. These include Total’s largest shareholder Blackrock and 6th largest shareholder Norges Bank.
The NGOs and eight plaintiffs hope to establish the criminal liability of TotalEnergies’ directors and shareholders for their contribution to climate change and to have them condemned for past decisions, which they took despite knowing they would trigger tremendous casualties and environmental damage.
This case also seeks to put a definitive halt to the expansion of fossil fuel extraction, which is leading to an unprecedented situation: a “globocide”, i.e. the irreversible disruption of the Earth System and the biosphere as a whole. Additionally, plaintiffs wish to obtain recognition that certain persons or entities like TotalEnergies’ board of directors and main shareholders hold a superior responsibility in the global destruction of the world as we know it.
Rising sea levels and submerged coastlines, deadly heat waves, mega-fires, devastating hurricanes, floods and landslides: the number of reported weather-related disasters has multiplied by five over the past 50 years, impacting the lives of the eight plaintiffs from Australia, Zimbabwe, France, Belgium, the Philippines, Greece and Pakistan as well as that of million other human beings and billions of animals. The disasters that ravaged their lives, such as the 2019 Australian bushfires, the 2021 European floods, and the 2022 Pakistan floods, have undergone scientific attribution studies, which concluded that climate change made each of them stronger and more likely to occur.
Scientists have established that so-called ‘natural’ disasters are less and less natural: their increase in intensity and frequency is a direct consequence of climate change, 80% of which is due to fossil fuels.
Although the International Energy Agency has recommended to halt all new fossil fuel projects since 2021 to keep to a 1.5°C pathway, TotalEnergies has kept opening oil and gas sites across the planet. It has even become the second most expansionist fossil fuel company in the world. The scientific community has determined that opening new fossil fuel projects is not compatible with limiting temperature warming to viable thresholds.
Despite being perfectly aware that climate change kills, the directors and shareholders of the multi-billion-dollar multinational have made the choice to expand oil and gas production for a single reason: to maximize profits.
At the 2023 Annual General Meeting, the Board of Directors even called on its shareholders to vote against the resolution to align TotalEnergies’ emissions with the Paris Agreement. This crucial resolution was rejected by 70% of shareholders.
Next the prosecutor has three months to decide whether to open a judicial investigation. If a decision is made to dismiss the complaint, or if no decision has been taken, the plaintiffs can lodge their complaint directly to an investigating judge.
NGOs supporting our climate litigation
