Destinataire(s) : Emmanuel Macron, French president

Let’s tax fossil fuel companies: our lives before their profits!

Close to US$200 billion in profits: that's what five Western-based oil majors (Total Energies, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Shell) alone earned in 2022. Meanwhile, populations from the Global South have continued to pay a high price for the consequences of climate change (floods in Pakistan and South Africa, heatwaves in India, etc.) for which they are not responsible.
It is time to make big polluters pay!

Pourquoi faut-il agir maintenant ?

The need to completely phase out from fossil fuels and the climate debt that rich countries owe to the Global South will be at the heart of the COP28 negotiations in November. While the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact paved the way towards establishing a levy on the most polluting sectors, political leaders did not make any concrete commitments in this regard.
Committed to fight for climate justice, our organizations reiterate the need for fossil fuel companies, the main contributors to CO2 emissions, to pay for the climate chaos their activities have unleashed. This is why we are calling on political leaders who will be meeting in Dubaï in November to tax the big polluters: oil, gas and coal companies that are destroying the planet while getting richer and richer

Why? It is high time for the fossil fuel industry to start repairing the damage it has caused by funding the response to the worst climate impacts experienced by populations in the Global South. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear that further expansion of oil, gas and coal must urgently be stopped if we want to stand a chance of staying below 1.5°C of global warming (1).

WHY TARGETING FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES?

Since the 1970s, many of these companies have publicly denied the catastrophic impact of their actions on the environment and public health, even though internal reports from their own scientific experts concurred with the IPCC's findings. This industry has chosen to ignore such reports and the damage, sometimes irreversible, caused by their activities, particularly in the Global South: loss of human lives, destruction of schools and roads, forced displacement of populations, etc. In 20 years, 55 of the most climate-vulnerable countries have suffered a total of US$500 billion in climate-induced economic losses. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry made enough super-profits to cover these costs nearly 60 times over (2)! Not to mention that these companies continue to largely benefit from public subsidies: they receive more than US$500 billion a year from G20 governments(1)!

YES, BUT HOW?

In 2022, at COP 27, we won a historic battle! Governments agreed to create a fund dedicated to loss and damage to provide financial support to countries most vulnerable to climate change that are regularly hit by cyclones, floods, droughts or relentless sea-level rise. At COP28, Governmentshave the difficult task of turning hope into reality by agreeing on how the Fund will operate, in particular who will benefit from it and who will have to contribute to it. Taxing fossil fuel companies would raise some of the money needed to fill the Fund. Concrete solutions must be found without delay to secure large amounts of money so that this fund does not remain an empty shell. It would be possible to tax fossil fuel extraction and export as well as the windfall profits made by the fossil fuel industries. Such taxes could generate between US$ 200 (2) to 300 billion(3) a year.

This is not a matter of solidarity or charity but a debt that these companies owe to the people of the Global South and the rest of humanity. Taxing fossil fuel companies is key to achieving climate justice.

TODAY, WE CALL ON POLITICAL LEADERS TO TAX FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES. LET'S PUT OUR LIVES BEFORE THEIR PROFITS!

Time is running out. We will be taking this petition to COP28, to be held from November 30 to December 12 in Dubaï, United Arab Emirates. Sign the petition today, and together we'll make our voices heard.

List of signatories:
- Action Non-Violente COP21 (ANV-COP21)
- Alternatiba
- CARE France
- CARE International
- Climate Action Network International
- Greenpeace France
- Greenpeace International
- Oxfam France
- Réseau Action Climat France
- Terre des Hommes France
- 350.org
(1) https://www.iisd.org/system/files/2020-11/g20-scorecard-report.pdf
(2) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/19/fossil-fuel-firms-owe-climate-reparations-of-209bn-a-year-says-study
(3) https://www.stampoutpoverty.org/live2019/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CDT_guide_web23.pdf