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VW in court – farmer and Greenpeace are suing car manufacturers

VW in court – farmer and Greenpeace are suing car manufacturers

A farmer from North Rhine-Westphalia is taking VW to court. The farmer and Greenpeace accuse the carmaker of being partly responsible for the increase in CO2 emissions and climate change. The process begins on Friday.

The lawsuit filed by an organic farmer and the environmental protection organization Greenpeace against the Volkswagen Group and its CO2 emissions will be heard in the Detmold district court in North Rhine-Westphalia on Friday. The farmer has a farm in Detmold and is suing for the omission of the “excessive” emissions of carbon dioxide.

Before the trial began, the automaker dismissed the lawsuit as “unfounded.” The plaintiff is demanding “individual liability for the general consequences of climate change” and “from our point of view this cannot be successful,” explained the Wolfsburg-based carmaker. “We will therefore move to dismiss the lawsuits.”

VW should no longer build internal combustion engines

The owner of an organic farm in Detmold would like to see VW only be allowed to equip a maximum of 25 percent of the cars and light commercial vehicles it sells with combustion engines by 2029. From 2030, the group should no longer be allowed to equip vehicles with such engines. By then, according to the plaintiff, VW should also reduce its CO2 emissions by 65 percent compared to 2018.

“In a free and democratic legal system, the key decisions are to be made by the legislature,” VW said on Tuesday afternoon. Disputes before civil courts through lawsuits against “individual companies singled out for this purpose” are not suitable for meeting the complex challenges of climate protection. With a wide range of electrified vehicles, Volkswagen is also contributing to a rapid switch to electromobility.

VW shares responsibility for climate change

The farmer and Greenpeace not only accuse VW, as one of the world’s largest car manufacturers, of being partly responsible for the increase in CO2 emissions and climate change, but also of having known about these dangers for decades. Research had shown that the group’s board of directors had been informed “since 1983 at the latest about the impending consequences of global warming and the proportion of damage caused by cars with internal combustion engines,” Greenpeace said on Wednesday.

According to the research, which SWR also reported on, a board member warned at a board meeting at the time of the consequences of increasing carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in traffic and the threat of climate change. Reference was made to the latest US studies on “far-reaching consequences in connection with climate change”. The studies had also identified measures to avoid further burning of fossil fuels.

Source: Stern

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