A French court is expected to rule in June on the nation’s first climate lawsuit aimed at holding a multinational oil giant accountable for its contribution to global warming, following a two-day hearing last week.
The case was brought in 2020 by a coalition of French local authorities, alongside five local civil society organizations against France-based multinational TotalEnergies, one of the world’s top six “supermajor” oil companies and one of the 20 largest historical emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases. It challenges the company’s continued expansion of oil and gas production – the primary fossil fuels driving climate change alongside coal – despite extensive and indisputable scientific evidence of their impact on global climate.
More specifically, the claimants argue that TotalEnergies’ strategy is incompatible with its legal duty of vigilance under a 2017 national law, which requires large French companies to identify risks and prevent human rights and environmental abuses resulting from their activities and those of their subsidiaries. Moreover, Article 1252 of the French Civil Code empowers courts to order “reasonable measures” to prevent or halt imminent ecological damage, acting independently of compensation claims.
