BERLIN — Environmental activist Clara Mayer and the heads of Greenpeace Germany have sued Volkswagen in a German court docket, the NGO stated on Tuesday, accusing the automaker of failing to do its half to fight climate change.
The claimants had given Volkswagen eight weeks to think about their calls for, which included ending manufacturing of inner combustion engine vehicles by 2030 and lowering carbon emissions by no less than 65% from 2018 ranges by then, earlier than submitting the swimsuit.
Volkswagen rejected the calls for on Oct. 28.
“Volkswagen stands for local weather safety and decarbonizing the transport sector, however it can’t sort out this problem alone,” a spokesperson stated in a remark to Reuters.
“The duty of designing acceptable measures belongs to Parliament. Civil court docket disputes via lawsuits towards singled-out firms aren’t the place or approach to do justice to this process of nice duty.”
An analogous lawsuit was filed in late September by the heads of German environmental group Deutsche Umwelthilfe towards BMW and Daimler , when each firms additionally rejected calls for to finish manufacturing of fossil fuel-based vehicles by 2030 and restrict CO2 emissions earlier than then.
The lawsuits draw on two prior climate-related circumstances: a German ruling in Could 2020 that the nation was failing to guard future generations from the results of local weather change, and a Dutch ruling the identical month ordering oil agency Shell to cut back its emissions, the primary time a non-public firm was held chargeable for its affect on the local weather.
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