German Constitutional Court Ruling on Climate Protection: Was the Judge Biased?
On April 29, the German Constitutional Court ruled that the German Climate Protection Law of 2019, mandating a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels, and setting out pathways to achieve that goal per sector during that time period, does not go far enough. The law, argued the court, must be amended by Dec. 31, 2022, to include further quotas on emissions per sector beyond 2030, in order to avoid “overburdening” the coming generations to the point where drastic measures might then be needed that would infringe on their human rights.
However, the court ignores the crippling consequences the drastic measures to reduce CO2 emissions will have for the economy and hence for the human rights, of the current and future generations, to rely solely on the unreliable predictions put out by the “usual suspects” of the global climate scare.
In an Interview published on the Tichys Einblick website on July 9, Fritz Vahrenholt, a former senator in charge of the environment in the Hamburg state government and leading critic of the climate hysteria, raises the question whether Gabriele Britz, the constitutional judge appointed as rapporteur to prepare the ruling, was in fact biased (and, by implication, should have recused herself or been excluded from the case). (https://www.tichyseinblick.de/video/interview/fritz-vahrenholt-klimaschutzurteil-bundesverfassungsgericht/)
Vahrenholt points to the facts that Britz took only one year to prepare the ruling, and that she only sought comments from environmental associations and institutions , without consulting industry associations and trade unions, or other social groups, even though the lawsuit has a significant impact on the economy, jobs and social security systems.
“Obviously, Judge Britz, i.e. the wife of the Green Bastian Bergerhoff, did not consider it necessary to hear critics of these extremely improbable and unrealistic scenarios from the Federal Environment Agency, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research or the German Council of Environmental Experts,” Tichys Einblick quotes Vahrenholt as saying.
“But if sources are selected in such a one-sided way, one may well ask whether there was bias on the part of the judge. And how did Bastian Bergerhoff know the central core sentences of the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court five months before publication? Or is it about the other way around: that Bastian Bergerhoff was the idea initiator of the central guiding principles?”
The website further notes that “the similarities between the verdict and the text of the Green politician are striking.” Bergerhoff has been a member of the state board of the Green party in Hessen and was spokesman for the Green Party’s city chapter from 2008-2012, in Frankfurt, where he also led the party’s slate in the recent local elections.
