After the “greenwashing”, the “redwashing”.
Activists covered the facade of the TotalEnergies company in red and black paint.
On the images broadcast on social networks around 9 a.m. Wednesday, February 8, we can see several young activists spraying red paint on the walls of the company's headquarters, located on the Esplanade de la Défense, near Paris.
Other activists then spread black paint in front of the entrances.
Then two young women come forward with banners on which we can read: “
SUPERPROFITS: you cash in, we suffer
”.
A reference to the record profits of $20.5 billion, announced by the company in 2022.
By this illegal action, these activists claim to want to denounce the “
climaticide projects
” carried out according to them by TotalEnergies and the absence of justice in the “
distribution of wealth
” resulting from these profits.
“
Total is a company that paints itself green.
Today, we paint it red and black, so the color of the victims of climate change and the color of the fossil fuels that make these profits
,” said Gabriel Mazzolini, spokesperson for Friends of the Earth and environmental activist for the Alternatiba association.
In addition to the climate alert, there is the social alert.
These activists also intend to put pressure on the state to "
not leaving, for example, the employees, the unions to negotiate alone in the balance of power, as was the case a few months ago
”, continues Gabriel Mazzolini, in reference to the strike movements which took place at Total last October, "
Suddenly we ended up with a negotiation which resulted in a wage increase of only 5.5%, where the strikers were asking for 10%
".
In the refineries of TotalEnergies, the strike which started yesterday was renewed this Wednesday.
These activists belong to at least two associations of environmental activists: "Alternatiba", ("alternative" in Basque), born from the acknowledgment of failure of the Copenhagen conference in 2009 on the climate, which intends to "
put the climate back at the heart of the political agenda
" and Les Amis de la terre, which presents itself as a militant collective for a "
sustainable society
".
This is not the first time that environmental activists have used such methods.
At the beginning of January, activists from the “Dernière Rénovation” collective sprayed orange paint on the facades of Bercy, Matignon and the Ministry of Ecological Transition to demand that the government renovate the energy of buildings.
Read alsoGlu, horns and exhaust pipes: environmentalists block the street to save the planet
In recent months, various militant groups have staged punch actions.
In museums, famous works of art had notably been sprayed with soup or paint, arousing strong reactions in the media.
In the sequence broadcast on Twitter, Gabriel Mazzolini affirms that these actions will continue in the coming days: “
We will continue.
In the days that follow, we have other organizations that will take other actions, and we will be there as long as Total does not withdraw from the gas and climate projects that it supports.
»
