Delta faces a class action lawsuit over its climate commitments


Delta Air Lines misled customers with its sustainability claims, a new class action lawsuit alleges. The suit was filed in California yesterday and seeks damages for any resident who’s been on a Delta flight since it made a big climate commitment back in 2020.
That year, the company made a $1 billion pledge to become carbon neutral. Instead of slashing its emissions entirely, the plan relied on carbon credits to offset the airline’s pollution. The credits are supposed to represent tons of carbon dioxide emissions either prevented or taken out of the atmosphere. But the math on carbon offsets hasn’t added up. Years of academic research and investigations have shown that carbon offsets often fail to represent real reductions in greenhouse gas pollution.
The plaintiff, Nickelodeon writer Mayanna Berrin, says in the suit that she “paid a substantial price premium due to the false and misleading carbon neutral claim.” “I felt comfortable paying more because I was neutralizing when I needed to travel for work or to see my family,” Berrin told The Associated Press. Had she known that the company’s carbon neutral claims were “false and misleading,” she wouldn’t have paid extra to fly with Delta, the complaint says.
The math on carbon offsets hasn’t added up
The aviation industry has come under fire for the way it uses carbon offsets to sell supposedly more sustainable flights. An October 2022 report found that some of Europe’s biggest airlines purchased offsets from highly suspect forestry projects. The projects capitalize on the ability of trees to store CO2, but that benefit is temporary unless the projects save forests from logging and fires for hundreds of years.
Delta relied on embattled carbon credit broker Verra to verify its forestry offsets in 2021, according to the new lawsuit. A Guardian investigation in January found that more than 90 percent of rainforest carbon offsets certified by Verra are likely “phantom credits” that don’t represent any real reductions in emissions.
In an email to The Verge, Delta claims that since March 2022, it has “fully transitioned its focus away from carbon offsets toward decarbonization of our operations, focusing our efforts on investing in sustainable aviation fuel, renewing our fleet for more fuel-efficient aircraft and implementing operational efficiencies.” The class action lawsuit is “without legal merit,” the email says.
Delta was responsible for the equivalent of roughly 43.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2022, according to its latest ESG report. That’s comparable to the climate pollution from 109 gas-fired power plants in a year.
Delta Air Lines misled customers with its sustainability claims, a new class action lawsuit alleges. The suit was filed in California yesterday and seeks damages for any resident who’s been on a Delta flight since it made a big climate commitment back in 2020. That year, the company made a…
Recent Posts
- I tried this new online AI agent, and I can’t believe how good Convergence AI’s Proxy 1.0 is at completing multiple online tasks simultaneously
- I cannot describe how strange Elon Musk’s CPAC appearance was
- Over a million clinical records exposed in data breach
- Rabbit AI’s new tool can control your Android phone, but I’m not sure how I feel about letting it control my smartphone
- Rabbit AI’s new tool can control your Android phones, but I’m not sure how I feel about letting it control my smartphone
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010