NGO WORK
100 years of Total Energies – a dark legacy
On 28 March 2024, the French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies celebrated its 100-year anniversary. In a happy coincidence, Total’s centennial party was spoiled by the news that their intimidatory legal action against Greenpeace France was unsuccessful!
The ruling was a major victory for freedom of expression and the fight against polluting companies like Total – especially since they are hellbent on expanding climate-wrecking operations despite a worsening climate crisis. Behind its facade as a “French industrial flagship” lies a grim history of environmental devastation and links to human rights abuses.
TotalEnergies’ history of lies
Researchers have found that Total’s awareness that its products could lead to catastrophic global warming dates to the early 1970s. However, according to historians, Total chose to implement a strategy of misinformation and a “factory of doubt” for many years, in order to delay and distract political action to limit oil and gas extraction.
Today, Total remains one of the most polluting companies on the planet. Despite its pledge to be net zero by 2050, fossil fuels still account for 98% of its energy production – and it recently announced plans to increase its fossil fuel production over the next 5 years.
TotalEnergies’ history linked to human rights abusers
Total proudly displays its ‘ethical charter’, but it has not hesitated to develop projects in countries where human rights are constantly violated.
In Burma, in the early 1990s, Total developed the Yadana gas project and became a major financial contributor to the ruling military regime, which was responsible for brutal human rights violations. It took two decades of pressure from civil society for Total to withdraw from the country.
More recently, Total’s giant EACOP pipeline and the Tilenga project has resulted in over 118,000 people being forced from their land in Uganda and Tanzania, according to grassroots organisations. Ugandan student activists were reportedly jailed by their government after voicing concerns about the project.
In 2022, Total was reportedly the only Western oil company that did not declare its withdrawal from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Working with Russian partners, Total extracts a gas condensate that has allegedly been processed into fuel for Russian fighter planes.
TotalEnergies’ history of toxic extraction
In Yemen, Total has reportedly been operating oil wells on the Messila field since the 1990s. Here, Total reportedly buried millions of litres of toxic water, which contaminated the only local freshwater source. The health of the population has reportedly been negatively affected, cancer cases have increased and farmers have been left destitute.
In Argentina, the Vaca Muerta shale gas extraction project is a real carbon bomb that could emit nearly 15 billion tonnes of CO₂e, according to Greenpeace France estimates. It is located on the lands of the Mapuche Indigenous populations, who say they have been displaced and the region is suffering from a huge amount of pollution.
“The oil companies entered our land without our permission … We had goats born without jaws, without mouths [because of pollution].”— an elder Campo Maripe to the Guardian
TotalEnergies’ history of environmental disasters
Like its competitors, Total has been involved in a number of tragic events that it would like to forget:
On December 12, 1999, the MV Erika, an oil tanker chartered by Total, sank off the coast of Northern France. The vessel spilled 20,000 tons of heavy fuel oil across 400 km of coastline, causing major environmental damage. Over 200,000 birds were killed.
Total denied responsibility, but was found guilty and convicted of “gross negligence” by French courts.
A few years later, 31 people were killed and more than 2,500 injured, as 400 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in a factory owned by a subsidiary of Total in Toulouse, France.
It was the worst industrial disaster to hit the country in fifty years. Here too, Total denied responsibility, and it took an 18-year trial for Total’s subsidiary to finally be convicted.
We must put an end to the reign of oil and gas!
Despite repeated warnings from scientists, Total continues to expand its fossil fuel operations. It’s time to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for the loss and damage they have caused to humans, nature and the climate. It’s time to stop all new coal, gas and oil projects and phase out these dirty fuels forever. It’s time for Total and the entire fossil fuel industry to stop drilling, and start paying.
Original Source: Green Peace
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The Great “Green” Heist: When Artificial Intelligence and Arms Dealers Seize the Minerals of the South
By Franck Zongwe Lukama, Congolese journalist and researcher, leads the independent media KilaloPress in DRC.
We were sold a simple equation: to save the planet, we must dig. Dig faster, deeper, extracting from the earth the cobalt, lithium, or copper needed for solar panels and electric vehicles. Yet, this climate rescue rhetoric conceals a staggering statistical deception. Today, 70% of global demand for critical minerals does absolutely nothing to support the energy transition. These resources end up in aerospace, communication technologies, and, above all, weaponry. Sectors that, ironically, exacerbate the global ecological crisis. The green revolution has become the perfect smokescreen, the moral veneer for a very different kind of war.
Far from the promises of sustainable development touted by the World Bank, the current scramble is driven by a strict logic of geopolitical power. A damning report from the California-based Oakland Institute exposes this global scheme. The report reveals an unprecedented and formidable convergence of interests between the American military-industrial complex and the giants of Silicon Valley. With the Pentagon openly pivoting toward a combat strategy focused on artificial intelligence (AI), securing supply chains is no longer a matter of ecology, but a question of survival in the face of Chinese influence. The United States is not seeking to reduce carbon emissions; it is seeking to guarantee its technological and military supremacy.
The real winners of this frantic race wear suits far removed from environmental activism. Trillions of dollars are flowing into new alliances that intertwine AI-driven mining companies, like KoBold Metals—backed by billionaires such as Bill Gates—and companies specializing in cutting-edge defense technologies, like Palantir and Anduril, not to mention the networks of influence close to the Trump family. For these players, the discourse of climate emergency acts as a powerful public relations tool. It justifies massive and accelerated extraction that would otherwise provoke international outrage.
Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world.
And the price of this hypocrisy is being paid in full throughout the Global South. In the Rubaya hills, in the Kolwezi copper belt, as in the Indigenous territories of Latin America and Asia, the promise of “prosperity” translates into a terrifyingly familiar tragedy. Land grabbing, forced displacement, devastating groundwater pollution: the plundering of ecosystems and human lives is accelerating. Local communities and Indigenous populations find themselves on the frontlines, forced to resist an extraction machine that has the audacity to justify their suffering by claiming it is necessary to save the world. Today, opposing the destruction of one’s village by a multinational mining company risks being accused of hindering the fight against climate change. The rhetorical trap is devastatingly effective.
The long-term consequences of this diversion are alarming. The exponential surge in demand generated by future AI data centers, mass surveillance, and global rearmament will mathematically deplete available reserves. Every ton of copper, nickel, or cobalt consumed by combat drones or algorithmic data processing servers is a ton diverted from the production of renewable energy infrastructure. We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.
We are not equipping the energy transition; we are cannibalizing it to militarize our future.
If no strict regulations are put in place to curb this rampant mining frenzy, hundreds of new mines will spring up in the coming years, causing irreversible damage on an unprecedented scale. The question facing citizens today, from Kinshasa to Washington, is no longer whether we will have enough minerals to save our atmosphere. It is why we are willing to sacrifice millions of lives and destroy our lands to fuel next-generation algorithms and weapons. In ten years, when the Global South is nothing more than a vast crater serving a militarized hyper-technology, it will be too late to realize that the planet was never the priority.
Photos: Artisanal Coltan – manganese – cobalt mining in Mudere mine under control of Nyatura militia, town of Rubaya, North Kivu region (Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa). Erberto Zani – stock.adobe.com
Source: oaklandinstitute.org/
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No Heritage Without its People: Why Ngorongoro Cannot be a World Heritage Site and an Eviction Zone
The Tanzanian government, under the guise of “conservation,” restricts Maasai livelihoods and denies access to essential services forcing Indigenous residents away from their ancestral lands and turning their heritage into a playground for safari tourists.
As the 48th Session of the World Heritage Committee begins July 19, UNESCO continues to legitimize the continued forced displacement of the Maasai from Ngorongoro. If UNESCO cannot ensure that the World Heritage designation protects the rights of its Indigenous custodians, then the Committee must remove the Ngorongoro Conservation Area from the World Heritage List.
Increased international pressure is imperative to hold UNESCO accountable and protect the lives and rights of the Maasai!
Read our Open Letter to the World Heritage Committee.
Source: oaklandinstitute.org
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