 Environmentalists file suit against Merkel's 'weak' climate laws Berlin (AFP) Jan 15, 2020 - Environmental groups announced Wednesday they had filed lawsuits at Germany's highest court accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel's government of failing to protect basic rights through its weak climate protection law. Greenpeace together with German groups BUND and Deutsche Umwelthilfe filed the legal actions, which are also backed by Luisa Neubauer, a prominent activist of the Fridays for Future climate strike movement. A dozen Bangladeshis and Nepalis, whose countries have been hard hit by global warming, also joined the initiative. "Climate protection is the protection of fundamental rights, particularly those of younger generations and inhabitants of most affected countries," said Remo Klinger, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. Germany should "make a contribution commensurate with its responsibility in terms of climate change", added Klinger, urging the Federal Constitutional Court to "show the way to go". Last year, the environmental groups backed three farmer families who took their case to a Berlin administrative court, but that case was struck down by the judge. Undeterred, they have now turned to Germany's highest court, evoking a decision of the Dutch supreme court, which in 2019 ordered the Dutch state to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Merkel's government last year agreed on a sweeping package of climate policy reforms that are estimated to cost 100 billion euros by 2030. With plans to make train travel cheaper and air travel more costly, the package is intended to help Europe's largest economy slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. - Environmental issues divide Germany - But climate activists argue that the plan is too weak to halt the planet from hurtling towards irreversible and devastating warming. "It's not just about future generations, but also our generation and our lives," said Neubauer. After two blistering summers and the escalating Fridays for Future protests started by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, climate has shot up to the top of Germany's political agenda. In her New Year's address, Merkel addressed the environmental challenge. "Global warming and the crises that arise from it are caused by human activity. This means that we must do everything humanly possible to meet this human challenge," she said. On Wednesday, German ministers agreed to back an action plan with investments of 3.6 billion euros to help sustainable resources replace material of fossil origin in everyday projects. The ministers highlighted different examples of bio-economy products, including car tyres made from dandelions, a flax-based car door as an alternative to carbon fibre, spider-silk trainers and a lightweight wooden cycle helmet. The ongoing climate debate has exposed a deep rift in Germany. Tens of thousands of workers in the country are dependent on the vital car industry. Coal mining is also still a key employer in many parts of eastern states. This gulf also runs through industries, such as in the agriculture sector. Some farmers have taken their tractors to Berlin in protest against more stringent restrictions against pollutants or pesticides like glyphosate. But others in the agricultural industry are holding counter-demonstrations against Berlin for not going further with outright bans on health-hazardous fertilisers. In the latest action Wednesday, beekeepers dumped glyphosate-tainted honey at the entrance of the agriculture ministry. Farmer groups have announced several fresh protests for the coming days, timed to coincide with the start of a major agriculture fair in Berlin from Friday.
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Business chiefs on Wednesday insisted they are not waiting on bickering governments to fight climate change, after Wall Street titan BlackRock joined a campaign pressuring companies to do more in the buildup to a week of networking in Davos.
Prior to the new decade's first conclave of global decision-makers, the World Economic Forum released a survey that it portrayed as a call to arms, after devastating wildfires in Australia and an inconclusive climate summit in Madrid.
The window to agree on decisive cuts to carbon emissions risks closing in the 2020s and if the world fails to act, "we will be faced with a situation where we are moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic", WEF president Borge Brende told a news conference.
In recent years, climate change and its dismal consequences have emerged as dominant concerns shadowing the WEF's A-list gathering of government and business leaders in the Swiss Alps, along with economic risks.
This time, the WEF's "Global Risks Perception Survey" found the top five categories of concern for the next 10 years were all environmental -- headlined by extreme weather events and failure of governments and businesses to forestall climate change.
For 2020 alone, economic confrontations and domestic political polarisation were among the shorter-term drivers of anxiety among the more than 750 executives and industry experts surveyed.
The world's most powerful climate denier, US President Donald Trump, will attend Davos next week, after agreeing a deal to defuse a trade war he started with China.
Also returning to Davos will be 17-year-old Swedish eco-activist Greta Thunberg, who called in British newspaper The Guardian for an end to the "madness" of investing in fossil fuels.
BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager with nearly $7 trillion invested, said Tuesday it was divesting holdings in companies that earn more than a quarter of their sales from production of electricity-generating coal.
In his annual letter to US company leaders, BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink said markets had been slow to reflect the risk of climate change to business models.
"But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance," wrote Fink, who will be among the VIPs in Davos.
- Private jets -
John Drzik, chairman of the business consultancy Marsh and McLennan Insights, said as a result of another BlackRock announcement last week, money managers holding more than $40 trillion now back a corporate initiative called Climate Action 100+.
While stressing the need for a unified response by governments, the campaign says its member companies account for two-thirds of annual global industrial emissions.
"Others will now have to respond to what BlackRock did," Drzik told AFP at the WEF report's launch.
"$7 trillion alone is meaningful but I think the scale and visibility and reputation of BlackRock just adds to the money."
German industrial group Siemens has bucked the corporate trend by pressing ahead with its involvement in a vast coal mine in Australia. And for Extinction Rebellion, BlackRock itself "remains waist-deep in fossil fuel investments".
Still, the needle appears to be shifting in boardrooms as CEOs factor in the likely impact of climate change on their bottom lines and come under pressure from customers, investors and regulators.
"You don't want to be stuck with technologies and industries that are obsolete. You want to find the winners of the new economy," Peter Giger, chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Group, said at the WEF event.
"That's just good business practice if you run a sustainable business with a long-term perspective," he said.
The WEF remains vulnerable to charges of double-standards given that many of the Davos elite use private planes to facilitate a week of deal-making and schmoozing.
The organisation said it was offsetting the carbon belched by such flights, encouraging their pilots to use biofuels, and offering discounted train tickets for those heading to Switzerland.
"It is something we take really seriously. There's nothing worse than an organisation identifying a risk and failing to do anything about it," WEF managing director Adrian Monck said.
Greenpeace climate finance campaigner Paul Morozzo commented: "The banks and financial institutions jetting into Davos next week have made trillions pumping money into climate-crashing fuels like oil, gas and coal.
"It's time to stop funding the crisis and start backing the solutions. That means immediately ending support for fossil fuels we cannot afford to burn," he said.
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