German Court Confirms Civil Liability for Corporate Climate Harms (cri.org) 31
An anonymous reader shares a report: In a landmark ruling advancing efforts to hold major polluters accountable for transnational climate-related harms, on May 28 a German court concluded that a corporation can be held liable under civil law for its proportional contribution to global climate change, Climate Rights International said today.
Filed in 2015, the case against German energy giant RWE AG challenged the corporation to pay for its proportional share of adaptation costs needed to protect the Andean city of Huaraz, Peru, from a flood from a glacial lake exacerbated by global warming. RWE AG, one of Europe's largest emitters, is estimated to be responsible for approximately 0.47% of global historical global greenhouse gas emissions.
"This groundbreaking ruling confirms that corporate emitters can no longer hide behind borders, politics, or scale to escape responsibility," said Lotte Leicht, Advocacy Director at Climate Rights International. "The court's message is clear: major carbon polluters can be held legally responsible for their role in driving the climate crisis and the resulting human rights and economic harms. If the reasoning of this decision is adopted by other courts, it could lay the foundation for ending the era of impunity for fossil fuel giants and other big greenhouse gas emitters."
Filed in 2015, the case against German energy giant RWE AG challenged the corporation to pay for its proportional share of adaptation costs needed to protect the Andean city of Huaraz, Peru, from a flood from a glacial lake exacerbated by global warming. RWE AG, one of Europe's largest emitters, is estimated to be responsible for approximately 0.47% of global historical global greenhouse gas emissions.
"This groundbreaking ruling confirms that corporate emitters can no longer hide behind borders, politics, or scale to escape responsibility," said Lotte Leicht, Advocacy Director at Climate Rights International. "The court's message is clear: major carbon polluters can be held legally responsible for their role in driving the climate crisis and the resulting human rights and economic harms. If the reasoning of this decision is adopted by other courts, it could lay the foundation for ending the era of impunity for fossil fuel giants and other big greenhouse gas emitters."
Interesting take on the subject (Score:5, Informative)
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They dismissed the case but "the court did rule that companies can be held liable for the impact of their emissions". It will be interesting to see if this will be cited in other cases in Germany and elsewhere in the EU.
Re:Interesting take on the subject (Score:4, Informative)
Germany does not have case law, hence legal precedents are not binding. The only reason they are used at all is to ensure some consistency - the judge might follow a precedent, but doesn't need to, since the actual laws, as they are written in lawbooks, have supremacy.
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The way a law applies to a specific case is not always very clear, thus the need for judges. The precedent may not be binding but it could be cited as justification for future rulings.
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It's interesting calling it "their" emissions. They aren't actually using energy for much of anything. Surely the emissions belong to those who use the energy right? *stares awkwardly at my car while muttering something about fucking evil oil companies*.
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This gets argued endlessly, but the court did issue a ruling and that may have consequences.
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I'm hung up on blaming them for the costs, but not crediting them for the benefits.
If they're held liable for whatever glacier disaster happened, are they also credited for the days that were pleasantly warm thanks to their influence?
I wonder how the Germans expect to hold countries like India and China accountable for their emissions.
Or the Pacific Ocean. Who gets to sue the Pacific Ocean for all the CO2 outgassing it does?
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So, doesn't that cost get passed through to the consumer?
This Will End Badly (Score:1)
This will either end on appeal, or this will end badly for Germany.
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This will either end on appeal, or this will end badly for Germany.
Why? Oh right, because a corporation being made to compensate you for the damage they caused when they pumped a truckload of toxic waste into your living room is Sooooo UNFAIR!!
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You exhale the same "toxic waste" into your own living room.
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While he might be exhaling his toxic gases in his living room, he's also exhaling it into our atmosphere and poisoning our planet. I really don't think that he should be allowed to destroy the planet of my children. Something needs to be done about him!
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my god you're right, how does he live with himself
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Perhaps you might see that it's a bad idea if the court just opened every German company to litigation from people both foreign and domestic. Taken to the extreme this could potentially destroy the German economy entirely. All while having no impact at all on the climate and everyone around Germany laughing and pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
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This will either end on appeal, or this will end badly for Germany.
There's nothing to appeal. RWE actually won the case, and paid nothing, and no legal precedence was set. The entire claim by Climate Rights International is a spin of a single side comment that ultimately had no bearing on the case.
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This is good news, for Germany.
regress = progress (Score:1)
Only a few more years until Germany finishes deindustrializing. Good luck!
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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We have had a few similar rulings in the Netherlands. And it's silly.
No you didn't. None of the rulings in the NL so far has held companies liable for past emissions. They have upheld ideas that company emissions infringe the rights of others and must be reduced, and to your government example there have also been cases upheld which say the government is setting boundaries and giving permits incorrectly, but nothing similar* has come out in NL
*To be clear the most similar thing about this case compared to anything in NL is that the company has paid nothing, and received no p
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Collectivist trash (Score:3, Insightful)
If a business can be held liable for the (very) indirect effects of *their customers'* activities, then the concept of individual agency and individual responsibility for one's actions is meaningless.
I hire a a guy to install a new air conditioner. That guy charges me $10k for the parts and $1k for the labor. He effectively pockets that $1k as profit and then uses them to buy a gun. Years later his business goes under, he loses his mind, and uses that gun to shoot up an ice cream shop.
Is it *my* fault that the money he used to buy the gun happened to come from the profit he took off of a job I paid him for?
Absurd example, but the reason it's absurd is that we ascribe responsibility for things to the people who caused them. And "caused" doesn't mean peripheral involvement, it means someone made a conscious decision, and had that decision been made differently, the thing in question wouldn't have occurred.
If this German company had never been started in the first place, the glacier would have still collapsed. So how the hell do you assign liability to a party for something that would have happened anyway?
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Looking at the actual article, it appears that German courts would require that someone prove that the damage done is real and that the company being sued is, in fact, responsible for causing it. They threw out the case where this could not be done.
Since your example is intentionally absurd, I'd suggest concluding that it does not closely resemble the process of the German courts. It would be just as easy to assume that this will play out about the same as a rule that if a bunch of companies dump lead in yo
Re: Collectivist trash (Score:1)
No, it would play out like if *everyone and their mother* bought several tons of lead, ground it down into little shavings, and dumped that in the water supply, the company that sold the lead gets sued and everyone else pretends to be the victims.
Free money for all victims! Especially Leftists! (Score:2)
Because nobody suffers more than Leftists and Democracts!