Farmer Ulf Allhoff-Cramer is suing VW and wants to fight for an even earlier exit from the combustion engine. He blames the automotive group for dried up forests and extreme climates. But is it really that simple?
Ulf Allhoff-Cramer has made a decision. He wants to continue working as a farmer, and his children and grandchildren should also have something from his farm. That sounds banal.
But if everything stays the way it is, then this goal will be a long way off. The farmer is convinced of that. “If I look at the last five years, then four of them were drought years,” he says in an interview with FOCUS online.
“Just this year we have seen that the whole of Europe is slowly drying up. That scares us farmers a lot.” The 62-year-old runs an ecological farm in Detmold, North Rhine-Westphalia, with suckler cows, grassland and fields on which he grows grain.
He wants politics and business to take the climate crisis more seriously. And Allhoff-Cramer is serious. He sued Volkswagen AG because of climate change. Hearings are held at the Detmold district court, the civil court closest to his court.
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“It’s my last chance to change something. The protests by Fridays for Future, scientists and other climate protectionists have not brought what is needed,” he says. Allhoff-Cramer believes that VW must finally be held accountable.
For the greenhouse gases that, in his opinion, the automobile manufacturer is responsible for through its millions of vehicles and that take away its livelihood. “Volkswagen produces incredible CO2 emissions. Their own profit is more important to them than our future,” says the organic farmer.
VW has been responsible for around one percent of global CO2 emissions in recent years, as can be read in the “Drive Volkswagen Group Forum”. Ex-VW boss Herbert Diess had also admitted this in the past.
With his lawsuit, Allhoff-Cramer wants to force the group to stop selling combustion engines by 2030 at the latest. So five years earlier than the EU Commission requires from the car companies.
Things didn’t look good for the organic farmer in May. A court spokesman had informed the “Legal Tribune Online” that there were various legal indications that would not indicate Allhoff-Cramer’s success. For example, he did not explain precisely enough how VW’s actions influenced his personal life and work situation.
Allhoff-Cramer responded. And changed his lawsuits. At the beginning of September, the Detmold district court decided to continue the oral hearing on February 23, 2023. So it’s not over yet.
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Allhoff-Cramer is frustrated, it’s not without reason that he’s going this far. There is probably hardly any professional group that feels the consequences of climate change as directly as farmers.
“I had a spruce forest in Sauerland, but it died due to the heat and drought,” says the 62-year-old. According to him, many deciduous forests are also not doing well. They wither, some damage is irreversible.
A look at the federal government’s “Harvest Report 2022” shows how difficult the situation is. “Apart from February and April, there was insufficient rainfall in all months of 2022,” it says.
The yield of grain maize is “catastrophic” in many regions of Germany, the grassland in many places is no longer green, but brown. “Our meadows were yellow for two months,” agrees Allhoff-Cramer.
“We lose half to two thirds of our yield, we already feed the cows with winter feed. You can’t farm like that, it’s pure lottery.” Allhoff-Cramer is desperate, you can hear that over the phone.
Is the business basis of many farmers falling victim to the business basis of large corporations like Volkswagen? Yes, if you ask Allhoff-Cramer. “They have made little effort to reduce their emissions. VW happily continued to sell masses of SUVs.”
If you look around on the Volkswagen website, you will find many articles about the group’s climate efforts. The “Zero Impact Factory” program, for example, has the goal of reducing CO2 emissions “in production per vehicle by 50 percent by 2025 compared to 2015”. But that’s not enough for the organic farmer.
An analysis by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” shows just how enormous Volkswagen’s greenhouse gas emissions are. Accordingly, the group is one of the 30 companies that cause more than a third of all greenhouse gases emitted in Germany.
Researchers have long warned that the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets on our planet. Today the earth is already one degree warmer than it was a hundred years ago. This development will continue. How strong is in our hands.
Allhoff-Cramer is angry, not only at Volkswagen, but also at the ignorance that he believes many politicians and entrepreneurs are displaying when it comes to the issue of climate change. For him it is clear that agriculture and thus our security of supply are threatened. That we destroy what we live on with our eyes wide open.
Many other farmers feel the same way. When hearings were held at the Detmold district court almost three weeks ago, numerous farmers were standing in front of the courthouse with their tractors, says the 62-year-old.
Not only colleagues, but also the local Fridays for Future group and Greenpeace are supporting Allhoff-Cramer in his lawsuit against Volkswagen. Can he set an example in the fight against climate change?
That’s the one question. The other is: can one really blame a single company for the consequences of climate change?
No, thinks Volkswagen. The group feels that Allhoff-Cramer is unfairly pillorying it and, when asked, emphasizes that it “stands by its responsibility to reduce CO2 emissions in all its fields of activity as quickly as possible”.
To this end, one of the “most ambitious e-offensives in the automotive industry” has been launched. It is the task of the legislature to shape climate protection “with its far-reaching effects”.
“Disputes before civil courts through lawsuits against individual companies that have been singled out for this purpose are not the place and the means to do justice to this responsible task,” the written statement continues.
But it’s not just VW that gets into trouble as a result of such proceedings. The German Environmental Aid is suing BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Wintershall Dea, for example. Only: what drives climate protection forward better – court decisions or laws?
Rebecca Harms, who sits on Volkswagen’s Sustainability Advisory Board, told Die Zeit: “We won’t win the fight against climate change in court. The major changes that are necessary must be wanted and supported by majorities.”
Farmer Allhoff-Cramer is nevertheless convinced of his lawsuit. In the end, he finds it “incomprehensible that corporations like Volkswagen have to be forced to rethink with lawsuits.” Its dead forest, its brown meadows, they give the farmer a stab in the stomach.
“How much nature still has to die, how extreme does the climate have to become for politics and business to finally take action?” He often asks himself that.
The 62-year-old, who has been campaigning for climate protection for a long time, knows that he will keep fighting. “If we lose in February, then we move on. Then the whole thing goes before the Higher Regional Court in Hamm,” he says. For the organic farmer it has long been clear that he has to do something. So that his multi-generational farm has a future.
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