Delta Air Lines faces lawsuit over $1bn carbon neutrality claim

theguardian.com:

Delta Air Lines is facing a lawsuit over its $1bn carbon neutrality claim which plaintiffs say is “false and misleading” as it relies on offsets that do little to mitigate global heating.

In February 2020, the US airline announced plans to go carbon neutral, pledging $1bn to mitigate all greenhouse gas emissions from its business worldwide over the next decade. It included plans to purchase carbon credits generated from conserving rainforest, wetlands and grasslands along with decreasing the use of jet fuel and increasing plane efficiency.

The new legal action, filed in California on Tuesday, targets Delta’s statement that it is “the world’s first carbon-neutral airline”, a claim it has made in adverts, LinkedIn posts, in-flight napkins and comments by company executives, according to the lawsuit.

The class-action lawsuit says Delta’s carbon neutrality claim is demonstrably false as it heavily relies on junk offsets that do nothing to counteract the climate crisis. It alleges that customers would have purchased Delta tickets believing they had no impact on the environment and many would not have bought them without the carbon neutrality claim.

Delta has not responded to request for comment from the Guardian.

“The language carbon neutral is so provocative,” says Krikor Kouyoumdjian, a partner with the legal firm Haderlein and Kouyoumdjian LLP which is bringing the case. “When companies say: ‘Don’t worry about our emissions, they’re sorted,’ they are communicating complacency. They are letting consumers pay to feel better and not have to worry about the impact of their consumption. But that is counterfactual to reality. It is not something that you can pay away.

“When I hear ‘carbon neutral’, I think you’re not doing anything