Greenpeace Germany sues Volkswagen for ‘fuelling local weather disaster’ | Automotive Trade Information

Lawsuit may slash automotive large’s CO2 emissions by two gigatonnes over the subsequent twenty years if profitable, NGO says.

A younger German local weather activist and the heads of Greenpeace Germany have sued Volkswagen (VW) in a German court docket for “fuelling the local weather disaster”, accusing the carmaker of failing to do its half to fight international warming.

The claimants – Clara Mayer and the NGO – gave the German carmaker eight weeks to think about their calls for earlier than submitting the lawsuit on Tuesday on the regional Court docket of Braunschweig.

Amongst their calls have been two objectives for 2030 – ending the manufacturing of inside combustion engines and decreasing carbon emissions by a minimum of 65 % from 2018 ranges.

VW rejected the calls for on October 28, Reuters reported.

Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace Germany’s govt director, mentioned automotive producers akin to VW “have to take accountability and act a lot sooner to part out the highly-polluting inside combustion engine, and decarbonise their actions with no additional delay”.

“Negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow point out that the 1.5-degree goal is at stake and might solely be met with a daring change in fact in politics and enterprise,” Kaiser mentioned in an announcement, citing the continuing UN local weather change summit which goals to restrict the rise in common international temperature to 1.5 levels Celsius (2.7 levels Fahrenheit) in contrast with pre-industrial ranges.

“However whereas folks undergo from floods and droughts triggered by the local weather disaster, CO2 emissions from transport proceed to rise,” he mentioned.

It is a message to all the companies who imagine their income are extra vital than our proper to a habitable future on this planet:

See you in court docket.https://t.co/lt8DBTEmiP#vwklage pic.twitter.com/ot14aEzfMY

— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) November 9, 2021

If the lawsuit is profitable, two gigatonnes much less CO2 will likely be emitted by 2040 in contrast with VW’s present plans, Greenpeace Germany mentioned.

That equates to greater than twice the annual international aviation emissions, based on the NGO.

VW informed Reuters that it “stands for local weather safety and decarbonising the transport sector, nevertheless it can not sort out this problem alone”.

“The duty of designing acceptable measures belongs to Parliament. Civil court docket disputes by lawsuits in opposition to singled-out corporations should not the place or technique to do justice to this activity of nice accountability.”

The same case was filed in September by the heads of German environmental organisation Deutsche Umwelthilfe in opposition to BMW and Daimler, when each corporations additionally rejected calls for to finish manufacturing of fossil fuel-based vehicles by 2030 and restrict CO2 emissions earlier than then.

Germany’s district court docket should weigh whether or not that case must be taken ahead, and any attainable ruling might be years away but.

The lawsuits draw on two prior climate-related authorized battles. In Might 2020, a German ruling mentioned the nation was failing to guard future generations from the implications of local weather change.

In the identical month, a Dutch ruling ordered oil agency Shell to scale back its emissions, the primary time a personal firm was held accountable for its affect on the local weather.