28 May 2026
Complaint against TotalEnergies: the criminal justice system caught between denial and powerlessness
28 May 2026
Whilst the historic heatwave currently underway, breaking all temperature records for this time of year, has already ‘directly or indirectly’ caused the deaths of seven people (1), the judges at the Paris judicial court responsible for investigating our complaint against TotalEnergies have ruled to close our case, just days before the Annual General Meeting of the climate-destroying oil giant, whose energy production is still 97% dominated by hydrocarbons. The fact that climate change has begun to destroy the biosphere, human lives and the economy was insufficient to justify opening an investigation into TotalEnergies’ board of directors and shareholders. BLOOM, the Alliance Santé Planétaire association and seven victims of extreme weather events from around the world had brought legal action against them for offences including endangering the lives of others, manslaughter, failure to prevent a disaster and damage to biodiversity.
In a ruling that displays a deeply worrying form of scientific relativism and invokes the difficulty of linking the causes of climate change to its consequences, the judges have highlighted the inability of criminal law to address both the systemic and irreversible disaster of climate change, and to stop companies that make the criminal choice to expand fossil fuel operations, including TotalEnergies.
But if the justice system claims to be powerless to prevent the “globocide” (the irreversible disruption of the Earth System which has been stable for at least 12,000 years) decided upon by a handful of industrial players and shareholders at a global level, and if states are complicit in exploitative strategies leading, in perfect knowledge of the facts, to the widespread destruction of the biosphere, then the judges are effectively sending a message to French citizens that climate change, and the destruction of the world as we know it, are inevitable.
However, this is neither possible nor acceptable outcome. That is why BLOOM and the victims of climate disasters who joined the proceedings as civil parties in May 2025 have decided to appeal against the order issued on 29 April, so that the French courts may rule on this case in light of the scientific consensus and the existential urgency for humanity and the entire biosphere to stop climate criminals.
The current heatwave, the daily proliferation of apocalyptic climate events around the world, as well as the recent work of economist Adrien Bilal highlighting that every additional degree of global warming leads to a fall in global GDP of around 20% (2), are sufficient to demonstrate that the law, as currently interpreted, is not capable of protecting humanity from the global danger posed by the new reality of climate change. Our appeal proceedings aim to prove that human justice is capable of rising to the challenge of this vital emergency for humanity.
On 15 May 2025, BLOOM, the Alliance for Global Health and seven victims of extreme weather events from around the world joined the proceedings as civil parties in a complaint against the oil major TotalEnergies.
Our aim at the time was to open the way for criminal liability against the directors and major shareholders of TotalEnergies, given their knowing contribution to climate change, which has caused loss of life and considerable environmental damage.
No criminal liability for climate change: when the requirement for strict causality leads to dangerous impunity
In the order sent to the complainants on 29 April 2026, the office in charge of investigating the complaint announced that it did not intend to open an investigation against TotalEnergies, on the grounds that the alleged acts were not criminally punishable and that the events in question were not ‘directly’ linked to TotalEnergies’ activities.
The court therefore considers that there are no “specific, clear, precise and immediately discernible obligations incumbent on TotalEnergies”, as the legal and regulatory provisions on emissions reduction are “essentially obligations imposed on States”.
Whilst not endorsing the arguments put forward in the civil proceedings, the order also considers that it cannot assess TotalEnergies’ criminal liability on the basis of its Scope 3 emissions (emissions resulting from the use by others of the oil and gas products it sells), as “criminal liability is subject to different causality requirements”.
According to the ruling, the criminal liability of an oil major and its executives, who bear historical responsibility for climate change, cannot therefore be called into question. If upheld, this would confirm that criminal law is ill-suited to addressing today’s climate challenges.
A harmful relativism
However, alongside the specific features of criminal law, there appears to be a relativist interpretation of the causes of climate change. The ruling goes so far as to state that “it is not these gases themselves that directly cause extreme weather events and the resulting health consequences, but rather global warming resulting from the greenhouse effect”. Whilst climatologist Christophe Cassou stated on Monday 25 May, in the face of the ongoing record-breaking and “once-in-a-millennium” heatwave, that “today, there is no heatwave that has not been exacerbated or amplified by the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere”, the ruling demonstrates an unreasonable stretching of the causality requirement by suggesting an untenable decoupling between greenhouse gases and extreme weather events.
The ruling goes on to argue that “not every extreme weather event is necessarily caused by climate change […]” and that “the GHG emissions specific to TotalEnergies’ activities, which, as the complaint states, account for approximately 1% of global emissions”, denying any “link whatsoever” between these emissions and the extreme events described: a baseless argument given that a new field of scientific research, named “attribution science”, has developed in recent years precisely to establish the link between the behaviour of identified actors and the occurrence of events specifically linked to climate change.
Whilst the ruling could, at the very least, have provided some breathing space by acknowledging the decisive impact of a major oil company such as TotalEnergies, it has, on the contrary, downplayed its role in global warming.
Rethinking criminal law in the face of global warming and the ‘globocide’ currently underway
According to Aymeric Thillaye du Boullay, Legal Director at BLOOM: “throughout history, the law has developed innovative tools to address crimes that were initially unthinkable and unimaginable. These times demand that we reconnect with the ‘imaginative forces of the law’, this time in the context of criminal law, in order to respond to new threats”. These threats stem from the expansionist logic of the fossil fuel industry, with the sole prospect of widespread destruction of the biosphere and humanity in what Günther Anders termed a “globocide” in reference to the nuclear threat. This climate crime already exists; we must be able to define it in legal terms.
“This ruling is not merely an admission of powerlessness, but an acceptance of powerlessness in the face of the unprecedented and all-encompassing threat that climate change poses to humanity,” concludes Swann Bommier, BLOOM’s Director of Advocacy. “The justice system must be able to stop climate criminals; this is its categorical imperative, one that is moral and absolute. No excuse can justify inaction or legal impotence in the face of the crime of globocide, which surpasses in scale, scope and intrinsic potential for destruction all previous crimes with which human justice has been confronted. We call on all legal practitioners to show boldness and imagination in responding to the unprecedented climate threat we all face. The stakes are nothing less than ensuring the Earth remains habitable”.
The concept of habitability has recently been defined by the philosopher Baptiste Morizot and the legal scholar Laurent Neyret in an essay (Liberté, Dignité, habitabilité, Tracts Gallimard, 2026). The authors point out that part of humanity is in the process of making the world uninhabitable, and that unless the law adopts a cardinal value, the Habitability Principle, we will no longer be able to allow life to flourish, much less guarantee other values protected by law such as freedom, equality or dignity. The authors call on “legal practitioners” in all their diversity (legal experts, judges, legislators, lawyers, etc.) to embrace the Habitability Principle in all their decisions, at every level of governance, for “what use is the law when the world is falling apart?”