What is this Total affair, which minimized its climate impact?

• A study published on Wednesday shows that the Total group was aware of the consequences of its activity on the disruption of the planet.

• Despite this knowledge, the oil group said nothing and even tried to cast doubt on the role of humans in global warming.

• An event far from unprecedented in the history of oil companies.

Alert, French giant in turmoil.

The oil major TotalEnergies, one of the country's flagships and one of the richest companies in France, has been in the eye of the storm since the publication on Wednesday of a study in the scientific journal

, showing that the company Oil was aware as early as 1971 of the “potentially catastrophic” impact of its activities on global warming, a time when most of the world was ignorant of everything or almost on the subject.

Despite this information in its possession, the group would have voluntarily continued to question certain reports and to confuse it about its lack of responsibility in global warming.

takes stock.

What does Total weigh in global warming?

According to the Climate Accountability Institute, from 1965 to 2018, Total emitted 12.7 billion tonnes of CO2, being one of the 20 most polluting oil companies.

This club of 20 would have emitted in this period 493 billion tons of CO2, or 35% of global emissions over the period.

What did Total know?

In 1971, the company's internal magazine published an article discussing "air pollution and the climate", and "the daily increasing quantity of fossil fuels, coals and hydrocarbons" used by mankind, resulting in "the release of quantities huge amounts of carbon dioxide. This increase in the content is quite worrying: indeed, carbon dioxide plays a large role in the thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere. The author of the article, the geographer François Durand-Dastès, indicated that an "increase in the average temperature of the atmosphere is to be feared" and that "an at least partial melting of the ice caps of the poles" is possible.

Knowledge further strengthened in the 1980s, due to close collaboration with several American oil companies, as evoked by Pierre-Louis Choquet, doctoral student in geography and one of the three authors of this Wednesday's study, interviewed by

 : “These companies had even more knowledge than Total, and have already been pinned for that, on the causality between their actions and global warming.

It is certain that Total benefited from this.

"

What was the knowledge about global warming in 1971?

In 1971, “the scientific consensus is far from being achieved” on the responsibility of human activities in global warming, recalls Pierre-Louis Choquet.

Knowledge of global warming by the scientific community is quite old, but there was no formal proof of the role of humans in it, although doubts already existed.

"Global warming was not the essential subject as today, Total was ahead of the knowledge of its time", summarizes the geographer.

What is Total criticized for?

Despite all this knowledge, Total continued "to pursue an offensive strategy to sow doubt around the scientific consensus and put the recognition of human involvement into perspective," adds Pierre-Louis Choquet.

This strategy was particularly offensive between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, and in particular after the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio in 1992, where consensus began to form. Total adopts a less offensive strategy during the second half of the decade, the company aiming for more caution on a subject which begins to impose itself and considers that being too brutal would be dangerous. “But until 2003-2004, we still see traces of climate skepticism in Total's speeches and actions,” notes Pierre-Louis Choquet.

There has been "a global effort over the past fifty years by the fossil fuel industry to generate ignorance, cast doubt on the legitimacy of climate science, fight against regulations and maintain the legitimacy of the oil majors. as actors of the global energy transition ”, summarizes the study published in Global Environmental Change.

ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, other oil companies, had already been singled out for such practices.

This is the first time that such a case has touched Total.

What is Total risk?

It is difficult to know at the moment, the report dating from this Wednesday.

In the United States, the ExxonMobil group has been targeted by several lawsuits for having lied about the consequences of its actions.

One of them, launched by the State of New York, was dismissed for lack of evidence.

Another proceeding is still ongoing in the state of Massachusetts.

ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and Shell executives are summoned to appear before the US Congress on October 28 over this disinformation around climate change.

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