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Version 1
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The German Climate Verdict, Human Rights, Paris Target and EU Climate Law
Version 1
: Received: 8 June 2023 / Approved: 8 June 2023 / Online: 8 June 2023 (12:21:26 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Ekardt, F.; Bärenwaldt, M. The German Climate Verdict, Human Rights, Paris Target, and EU Climate Law. Sustainability 2023, 15, 12993. Ekardt, F.; Bärenwaldt, M. The German Climate Verdict, Human Rights, Paris Target, and EU Climate Law. Sustainability 2023, 15, 12993.
Abstract
The German Constitutional Court’s climate verdict provides a re-interpretation of liberal- democratic core concepts and is highly relevant for liberal constitutional law in general – including EU and international law. The verdict accepts human rights as intertemporal and globally applicable; it applies the precautionary principle to these rights and frees them from the misleading causality debate. However, the court fails to address the most important violations of human rights, and it categorised climate policy as a greater threat to freedom than climate change. And the court does not make it clear that the Paris 1.5-degree limit implies a radically smaller carbon budget. Furthermore, little attention has so far been paid to the fact that the ruling implies an obligation for more EU climate protection, especially since most emissions are regulated supranationally. To be effective, the EU emissions trading system demands a reform, which should go well beyond the existing EU proposals to enable societal transformation to sustainability.
Keywords
climate change; Paris Agreement; human rights; IPCC; climate policy; Climate Litigation; precautionary principle
Subject
Social Sciences, Law
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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