{"id":67431,"date":"2024-12-07T11:52:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T03:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/?p=67431"},"modified":"2024-12-08T14:49:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-08T06:49:59","slug":"filipino-suing-total-energies-testifies-to-protect-french-scientists-from-fossil-fuel-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/press\/67431\/filipino-suing-total-energies-testifies-to-protect-french-scientists-from-fossil-fuel-giant\/","title":{"rendered":"Filipino suing TotalEnergies testifies to protect French scientists from fossil fuel giant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

6 December 2024, Le Havre, France<\/em> \u2014 The Filipino plaintiff in the transnational criminal climate lawsuit against oil company TotalEnergies testified in a French court on Friday in the defense of activist scientists being sued for their climate protests against the same company.1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n

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Frank Nicol Melgar Marba, the teacher and public servant from storm-vulnerable Dinagat Islands\u2014who is also the sole Filipino plaintiff in a transnational climate lawsuit filed against TotalEnergies2<\/sup>\u2014spoke on Friday before the Le Havre Judicial Court, where twelve are undergoing trial following their action to protest a TotalEnergies LNG terminal put into service in the French port city.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWhy are climate activists and scientists here being accused of crimes? This is beyond reason,\u201d said Marba, who introduced himself as a climate survivor who is still vulnerable to future impacts of climate change, and who is well aware that typhoons are getting more intense and more frequent every year.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIn the span of one month, six typhoons devastated my country. That is absolutely not normal or natural,\u201d he said \u201cI remember my grandparents saying that they only experience one major typhoon every thirty years or so.\u201d In contrast, and because of the worsening climate crisis, he has personally experienced three, including Rai [Odette] which made landfall in the Philippines in 2021, nearly killing him and his grandmother.<\/p>\n\n

As a result of this experience Marba joined seven plaintiffs from around the world in a lawsuit led by the Bloom Association3<\/sup> against TotalEnergies’ board of directors and main shareholders “for deliberately endangering the lives of others, involuntary manslaughter, neglecting to address a disaster, and damaging biodiversity.”<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt should be criminal for fossil fuel companies to drill for more oil and gas. They knew fifty years before that doing so will cause global warming and lead to climate impacts,\u201d Marba said, citing reports and invoking scientific consensus that fossil fuel companies hold the lion\u2019s share in historical global greenhouse gas emissions that are supercharging the climate crisis. \u201cHow is it possible that with all this knowledge, with all these stories from climate victims, oil and gas companies are still allowed to proceed with new fossil fuel projects?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The scientists on trial are being charged for \u201cobstruction of traffic.\u201d They blocked the Ecluse Fran\u00e7ois 1er\u2014a famous lock (canal gate) built to control the movement of ships in and out of the port of Le Havre\u2014in order to denounce the development of a new LNG terminal by TotalEnergies, which they say will further lock France into the overconsumption of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n

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\u201cFrank, a climate survivor from one of the most vulnerable countries in the world, is here to stand up for climate activists around the world. He makes me proud to be a Filipino,\u201d said Virginia Benosa-Llorin, Greenpeace Philippines Senior Climate Justice Campaigner. \u201cIt is unprecedented that a climate survivor from the Global South will testify in a French trial in support of activists from a developed nation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cFrank doesn\u2019t just provide much needed perspective of the climate crisis from one of the most vulnerable nations in the world,\u201d she said, \u201che also shows us how to be courageous for the climate, even when we\u2019re up against the rich and influential carbon majors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Virginia Benosa-Llorin said that Marba deserves not only the support of Filipinos everywhere, but the support of his government, in the form of policies\u2014and legal action\u2014grounded in climate justice.\u201cEarly this week we saw the Philippine government stand up for climate justice in the Hague in its oral argument in the ICJ.4<\/sup> We urge the Philippine government to translate this to policies and action back home. We are calling on President Marcos Jr. to certify the Climate Accountability (CLIMA) Bill as urgent. A strong CLIMA bill,5<\/sup> anchored in climate justice, will create local mechanisms for us to do what Frank is doing in France right now: to take climate polluters to court and hold them accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Notes to Editors:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

[1] Scientists trying to protect humanity on trial<\/a> [translated from French]<\/p>\n\n

[2] Filipino joins landmark transnational climate litigation against oil company<\/a><\/p>\n\n

[3] <\/a>\u2018Strong PH statement at ICJAO a lifeline for climate impacted communities\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n

[4] Landmark inquiry finds legal grounds to hold climate-destroying corporations accountable<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

LINK TO PHOTOS HERE<\/a><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

For more information and interview requests, please contact<\/em><\/strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

James Relativo
<\/strong>Communications Campaigner, Greenpeace Southeast Asia \u2013 Philippines
james.relativo@greenpeace.org | +63 919 069 3424 | +63 960 480 0297<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Filipino plaintiff in the transnational criminal climate lawsuit filed against oil company TotalEnergies testified in a French court on Friday in the defense of activist scientists being sued by the same company for climate protests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":67443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25,6,24,26],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-67431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability","tag-democracy","tag-climate","tag-activism","tag-justice","p4-page-type-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67431"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67453,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67431\/revisions\/67453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67431"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/philippines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=67431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}