Greenpeace on crusade against Total and "the dirtiest oil in the world"
(AFP) - 21 hours ago
PARIS - Greenpeace carried out a series of actions on Saturday at Total service stations across France to protest against the French group's investments in Canada in the exploitation of the tar sands, "the dirtiest oil in the world".
These awareness-raising operations, which took place without incident, took place simultaneously in 11 French cities.
According to the environmental organization, a barrel of oil from the tar sands emits, from extraction to consumption, five times more greenhouse gases than a barrel of "conventional" oil.
In the center of Strasbourg, about twenty activists have taken over a service station, dressed in orange overalls and waving signs "Total invents sustainable destruction". Same scenario in Bordeaux where a dozen activists distributed leaflets near a station in the city center, without hindering access.
In a Total station on the outskirts of Lille, they also offered motorists to sign a petition asking Nicolas Sarkozy to urge France to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% compared to 1990 by 2020.
"We are 50 days from Copenhagen" (summit which aims to reach a global agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions), recalled Amélie Antoine, spokesperson for Greenpeace Lille. "If the large private groups do what they want on the side, this summit will be useless," she said.
In Lyon, customers and employees of a downtown gas station were made aware of "what the Total group has been investing in for several years in Canada: the most expensive and dirtiest oil in the world".
“At the local level, we are more in raising public awareness two months before the Copenhagen conference” than in shock actions, explained Coralie Duby, coordinator of the organization in Lyon.
Since September, Greenpeace activists have stepped up actions, particularly in Canada and France, to protest against the exploitation of these oil sands.
Eight days ago, around thirty of them entered the Total refinery in Gonfreville-l'Orcher, near Le Havre, to denounce the group's "responsibility" for climate change.
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