A farmer is suing Volkswagen, saying that it is partly responsible for the impact of global warming.
German automaker Volkswagen is currently facing a lawsuit in its own home country. A farmer sued the former, claiming that the automaker is responsible for the changes in temperature that have affected his livelihood.
The complainant, Ulf Allhoff-Cramer, said that drier soils and heavier rains due to climate change affect his fields, cattle, and commercial forests.
He told the local media, “Farmers are already being hit harder and faster by climate change than expected,”
During its first hearing, a regional in Germany asked the complainant and his lawyers to provide further details to back up their complaints, according to German News Agency DPA via Autoblog. The next hearing in court is set for September 9 this year. The lawsuit is supported by the environmental group Greenpeace, which has previously backed similar legal efforts.
In his complaint, Allhoff-Cramer wants Volkswagen to end the production of combustion engine vehicles by 2030, which German automakers also rejected similar demands from environmental groups.
“Volkswagen stands for climate protection and rapid decarbonization of the transport sector but cannot meet this challenge alone,” the company said. It also added that the transformation also depends on government regulation, technological development, and buyer behavior.
VW CEO SAID CAN’T GO ALL IN WITH EVs YET
As Volkswagen intends to be carbon neutral by 2050, VW CEO Herbert Deiss stated that they can’t go all-in yet with EV acceleration. He noted an increasing demand for EVs; however, the infrastructure to manufacture these is lagging.
“We need the correct plants to be modified or built, the battery production capacity to be available and to build a secure, sustainable supply chain,” Deiss said during the Financial Times’s Future of the Car summit.
“Our goal is to be the world leader in EV sales by 2025. We have a very ambitious plan to achieve that and have invested hugely to achieve it, but some analysts aren’t taking the amount of effort required to achieve our goals seriously enough,” said Diess.
Volkswagen announced its investment of 14 billion euros in decarbonization by 2025. it targets a 40% reduction in CO2 emissions per vehicle in Europe by 2030 and aims to be carbon neutral by 2050.
