Europe is struggling through an intense summer of climate breakdown. France’s heatwave shut schools and stretched hospitals stretched past their limits, with so many people dying in their apartments that morgues have run out of space.
Outdoor workers have faced conditions beyond what the human body can safely withstand.
It is against this backdrop that a Paris court has delivered a ruling that reshapes who can be held responsible for this unfolding crisis.
On 25 June, the Paris judicial tribunal ruled on a case brought against TotalEnergies by environmental groups and the City of Paris.
The judgment does not halt the company’s fossil fuel expansion. But it does something the industry has spent half a century resisting: it holds TotalEnergies legally responsible not just for the emissions from its operations, but for the emissions produced when the oil and gas it sells are ultimately burned, or what is known as Scope 3 emissions.
