Greenpeace France: TotalPollution: A Dirty Game

The global fossil fuel industry extracts enough oil to fill a rugby stadium every 3 hours and 37 minutes, according to a powerful new animated video released today by Greenpeace France. Together with production company Studio Birthplace, represented by Park Village in the UK, Greenpeace France created the video to campaign against fossil fuel sponsorship of major sporting events like the Rugby World Cup 2023, which this year is sponsored by French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies. But the Rugby World Cup Limited tried to block the release of the video with a cease and desist letter sent to Greenpeace International on Tuesday 29 August - the day before the video was due to go public. The animated 60-second film, ‘TotalPollution: A Dirty Game’, digitally fills up the Stade De France - the stadium in Paris where the first match between France and the New Zealand All Blacks will take place on 8 September - with the amount of crude oil that the global fossil fuel industry collectively produces in three hours and 37 minutes. That’s more than six and a half stadiums worth of oil every 24 hours. The video features voice-overs from Irish comedian and actor Seán Burke and French comedian and radio columnist Guillaume Meurice. In slapstick fashion, the animated video shows oil spilling out of TotalEnergies logos dotted around the stadium, knocking over the rugby players and fans in their seats, who are represented by mannequins. The last 10 seconds of the video features footage of real climate destruction caused both directly and indirectly by the fossil fuel industry.