Job’s Mob has been banging on about its latest smartwatches being climate saviours for nearly two years. It claims that clean energy in factories, recycled tat in the materials, eco-friendly shipping and, carbon offsets through projects like a eucalyptus plantation in Paraguay make everything penguin and polar bear friendly.

However, Deutsche Umwelthilfe, rather appropriately, as DUH, wasn’t buying it. The German environmental outfit hauled Apple into court in May and the Judge's ruling came out yesterday.

At the centre of the court’s scepticism was the Paraguayan forestry scheme. While Job’s Mob boasts about carbon credits tied to the project. The eucalyptus trees grow on leased land, and three-quarters of those leases expire in 2029. After that, there’s zero guarantee the trees won’t get chopped, torched or turned into something that belches carbon.

The court said German Apple fanboys would reasonably expect that carbon neutrality claims hold up until 2050 which is the Paris Agreement's rough deadline. The fact Apple’s scheme peters out two decades early was enough to make the judge's gavel twitch.

Sure, Apple’s scheme uses the Verified Carbon Standard’s pooled buffer account to supposedly cover future uncertainties, but the court wasn’t having it. Monitoring the situation after the fact isn’t the same as guaranteeing emissions get offset if the trees go missing.