Klimaklagen gegen Private als Regulierungsinstrument

Can climate change be stopped by private lawsuits brought by environmental protection associations? Can, for example, car manufacturers be forced to stop producing combustion engines, even though this is still permitted by law? Alexander Hellgardt shows that such regulatory climate litigation has little chance of success under current German law. Even in the case of injunctions, it must be shown that there is a threat of a causal infringement by the defendant company. In practice, this can rarely be proved. However, the courts could be forced by the constitution to lower these high hurdles and enable effective climate protection if Germany were to fall significantly short of its climate protection targets in the future.