Total is charged guilty of pollution

"Eight years on and after a judicial marathon of unprecedented complexity, the Paris correctional court has delivered a verdict that will go down in history", writes Xavier Ducarme. "Until now, victims of an oil slick had to prove great loss in order to obtain compensation from the polluters. The annihilated harvest of an oyster farmer, the poisoning of a salt marsh, the blocked access to the sea for a flotilla of trawlers, the massive exodus of holiday makers... damage that experts have managed to evaluate without too much difficulty. What, however, is the price in euros of the death of a tern, of a gull or of a mackerel, the sterilising of a seabed, the destruction of a landscape ? Up until now, nature was unable to claim its rights in court. French justice appears to have repaired what seemed an injustice, a denial."

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