Umweltschadensgesetz – Klimaschutz und Verursacherprinzip

On the basis of the polluter pays principle the Environmental Damage Act gives reasons for a responsibility under public law with regard to the prevention, reduction and remediation of environmental damage. As a result, the main challenge is to establish proof of a causal relationship between different emissions and the occurring of damage going with them. This refers particularly to climate damages that arise as a consequence of a summative, extremely complex and dynamic interaction of global emitted emissions. This shows that making a legally relevant diagnosis of causality referring to climate changes, hits the glass ceiling of human's possibility for findings. In this respect it is impossible tomake a reliable and individual statement, whether a greenhouse gas emission has taken part in an environmental damage, and if so, how much it has contributed to it. In addition, a legal obligation of individual emitters for the remediation of climate damage regularly proves to be unsuitable and practically unfeasible anyway in view of their specific origin and effect.

Autor: Iven Beckbissinger