With three mass actions in the past two years, Code Rouge/Rood has brought together thousands of people to raise their voices against the fossil fuel and aviation industries. These industries are key pillars of the extractive, exploitative and polluting capitalist system. To abolish injustices and maintain a livable planet for generations to come, this system needs to change NOW. It is time to put the fossil fuel era behind us and build a socially just and sustainable future together.
Time is running out and still, real actions fall short. Each one of us can already see the consequences of the climate crisis in our daily lives. For the most privileged, it seems this is just at the beginning. For people who have lost their loved ones to heatwaves, their homes to floods and their crops to drought… the damage is already here.
The industries who benefit from burning fossil fuels have been using their economic and political power to avoid taking responsibility. But the climate crisis will catch up with us all. We can’t allow them to keep looking the other way and continue business as usual, that’s why we are back.
TotalEnergies, Engie, aviation industry,
you better be ready.
OUR TARGETS
Climate scientists have been telling us for decades that we must stop using fossil fuels now, to reduce the social and environmental damages caused by climate change. Yet all three of our previous targets are still expanding their activities, hungry for more super-profits :
- TotalEnergies is still massively investing in increasing the production of oil & gas by 3% in the next 5 years.[1][2][3]
- Engie is still planning the construction of new fossil gas plants here in Belgium.[4]
- The airports of Liège and Antwerp are growing in order to carry out not only more commercial flights, but also more cargo and private flights than ever before.[5][6]
In Belgium, citizens are directly paying the price for these harmful activities. We are paying, not only by suffering the environmental and health consequences, but also through generous subsidies and tax breaks offered by our governments. Many people today, facing skyrocketing prices, struggle to pay the bills at the end of the month. In the meantime, the fossil fuel industry is making record profits without paying the costs for their destruction :
- TotalEnergies made a record profit of 19.8 billion euros in 2023, with oil and gas remaining the main sources of revenue.[7][8]
- Engie is aiming to more than double its net profit in 2024, up to 5,6 billion euros.[9]
- Belgium is losing out on up to 700 Million Euros per year due to poor aviation taxation.[10]
TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry claim to be committed to reducing their emissions, but their actions reveal that this is pure and simple greenwashing. They have taken control of the energy transition, dictating its pace and blocking any climate action in order to continue exploiting fossil fuels for as long as possible.[11]
It is futile to expect our targets to make a real shift away from fossil fuels under current conditions, regardless of the good or bad will of their executives, or their personal views on the climate crisis. All the economic, political and legal signals encourage them to maintain the business as usual.
We are targeting TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry, not because of the people who use them or work in or with them. We target them because they are drivers of a destructive capitalist system. In this system, the people who benefit the least suffer the most. Industry profits do not even go to the workers, they go to the 1% who own big shares in these companies. What we want is to democratize the workplace, to regain power over our lives and decide collectively on our future. Trade unions and workers must be closely involved in the development of qualitative retraining plans for workers in polluting industries that will disappear. We need fair jobs for all in a low-carbon economy.
We are also targeting our political representatives, as they have always supported and are still supporting these industries to this day. With money, infrastructure, permits, influence… they play a huge role in making sure these industries have the possibility to act in destructive ways. It makes them complicit. We therefore urge them to make different choices.
FIGHTING FOR CHANGE
We want to live in a world where we care more about collective well-being and ecosystem health, than about endless economic growth and consumption. So let’s raise our voices once more, for a society in which we:
- Honor planetary boundaries and human rights, instead of disgracing them.
- Choose long-term resilience, over short term profits.
- Use taxes for good, not to sabotage our own future
- Meet everyone’s right to a dignified life and we are guided by solidarity, justice and peace.
Code Rouge/Rood consciously chooses civil disobedience as our action method, because we feel that we have depleted all legal action methods. Deliberately breaking the law is our means of last resort.
Great changes in history often took place after massive acts of resistance. Ordinary people have chosen to resist and organize, to break the law, to demand change. Think about the impact of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., fighting against racial segregation. Or about the Dutch Climate movement that got the government to stop funding oil and gas projects abroad in 2021 thanks to the repeated highway blockades. Or about the Sudanese uprising in 2019, where women, desperate for justice and peace, organized demonstrations that brought thousands of people together to demand a democratic future. It has worked in the past, and it will work for us now.
Systems are not set in stone, they are constructed. With imagination, willpower, hope and collective action, we can change them.
STANDING UP AGAINST A GLOBAL CAPITALIST SYSTEM
The system in which TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry operate is built on oppression that reaches far beyond borders. It is fueling war and human rights violations throughout the world. Although ordinary people living in Western societies are not to blame for all global problems, we do bear (historic) responsibility. Our political elite and multinationals created this system of inequality and oppression during the colonial period, and are still sustaining it today. We have to acknowledge its existence and actively resist if we want to see real change in this world.
To tackle this global system we need a global movement that is willing to fight back. We have to reach out, listen and learn from people and communities in our own streets and on the other side of the planet. We are all connected. We are the many. They are the few. We are allies. Let’s us act like allies. In a society that uses violence as an mean to control and oppress people, it is a privilege to be able to stand up. With Code Rouge, we do not want to take this privilege for granted.
So, we stand up against a global system, as part of a global movement, to fight oppression here, there, and around the whole world.
To TotalEnergies, Engie and the Aviation industry we say: It’s time to stop your destruction. We are back. We are not backing down.
And to you:
We need you, join us.
[1] https://totalenergies.com/company/ambition/strategy
[2] https://totalenergies.com/sites/g/files/nytnzq121/files/documents/2024-07/totalenergies_factbook-2023_2024_en_pdf.pdf (p5)
[3] https://www.clientearth.org/projects/the-greenwashing-files/total/
[4] https://corporate.engie.be/en/energy/gas
[5] https://gresea.be/Boom-du-fret-aerien-lie-au-e-commerce-Liege-Airport-en-premiere-ligne-malgre
[6] https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/10/27/vlaanderen-subsidieert-de-vakantievluchten-van-de-rijken/
[7] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2024/02/07/totalenergies-makes-its-biggest-profit-ever_6501210_114.html
[8] https://totalenergies.com/sites/g/files/nytnzq121/files/documents/2024-02/TotalEnergies_PR_4Q23_Results.pdf
[9] https://www.brusselstimes.com/1166696/engie-posts-net-profit-of-e1-9-billion-in-first-half-of-2024
[10] https://www.transportenvironment.org/uploads/files/tax_gap_report_July_2023-1.pdf
[11] https://gresea.be/Les-multinationales-vertes-demasquees