When I called Mex Müllner one afternoon this week, the temperature in his small Austrian village was about 91 degrees Fahrenheit. The 43-year-old stayed indoors because going outside would prevent his muscles from communicating effectively with his brain, leaving him temporarily paralyzed. Müllner has multiple sclerosis and, like the majority of people with MS, suffers from Uthoff syndrome, a neurological condition that worsens with exposure to heat. He told me he feels like a remote-controlled car with a faulty controller: The engine and wheels work fine, but the car won’t move because the controller won’t connect.
“Mex” was once a nickname, but he now uses it as a pen name to protect his private life. He is suing the Austrian government for violating his human rights by failing to curb the climate crisis. The case is being heard by the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions are binding on the countries involved. When people, like Müllner and his lawyers, run out of options in national courts, they turn to international courts. According to Müllner’s lawyer Michaela Cromer, the ECHR’s priority review shows that it is taking Müllner’s case seriously.
The case is part of a series of recent climate lawsuits that are testing how the law can be used to push for stronger climate policy. Climate lawsuits globally have more than doubled since 2017, with 230 filed last year alone. But Müllner’s case is unique and surprisingly intimate. If it moves forward, he would be the first individual to gain standing for a climate lawsuit at the ECHR. All of the lawyers I spoke to for this article believe he would likely be the first individual in the world to have his personal harm from climate change recognized as a human rights violation.
Mullner v. Austria It highlights the direct link between health and climate change. Heat can exacerbate a range of medical conditions, including diabetes and depression, making Müllner’s illness even more painful. Meanwhile, Austria has failed to meet its climate commitments; the country recently missed a European Union deadline to submit a climate plan and is not expected to meet even the EU’s minimum emissions reduction targets. Müllner’s lawyers argue that Austria’s failure to adequately address greenhouse gas emissions has violated Müllner’s rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which Austria has ratified and which protects “life, liberty and security” and “respect for private and family life”.
The lawsuit is similar to many in which children are suing their governments, claiming that failure to act on climate change violates their right to a livable future. One such lawsuit was recently won in South Korea, and a lawsuit was filed in Germany to force the government to pass more ambitious emissions-reduction targets in 2021, arguing that previous targets unfairly burdened future generations. But for Muellner, the damage is done now. His illness robs him of a little more mobility each year, but it’s the heat that keeps him from walking outside on this summer afternoon.
Muellner was diagnosed with MS at the age of 23. He started a club with friends who had brought back a few bats and mitts from a trip to the US, and he was able to run and play baseball. A few years after his diagnosis, on a chilly autumn day, he prepared a baseball field for winterization. After returning home, Muellner took a hot bath to warm himself up, only to discover he couldn’t get out. The controller had come off the car. He had to drain the water and wait for his body to cool down before he could get out of the tub. From then on, the heat was like a prison to him.
In cooler weather, he can walk with crutches. But when temperatures approach 77 degrees Fahrenheit, he has to use a wheelchair. At or above that temperature, he can’t move at all. In summer, he spends all day indoors. But even nights sometimes offer no relief. The Austrian National Weather Service reports that there are an increasing number of summer nights where the temperature does not drop below 68 degrees Fahrenheit, a threshold where Mullner says he begins to feel the effects of Uthoff’s syndrome. Now, he is waiting for the autumn chill to set in. But the first few days of September have seen much of the country hit by a heat wave. Austria, like most places on Earth, is getting hotter and, in fact, warming at a faster pace than the global average. The number of annual days above 77 degrees Fahrenheit has nearly doubled in Mullner’s lifetime, according to the lawsuit. This July was the second-hottest July on record in the country’s lowlands. “The government is sleeping and doing nothing,” Mullner said. He’s grateful to Austria’s universal health care system for treating his illness, but he doesn’t understand why Austria doesn’t take the right to a livable climate more seriously. Most Austrians seem to agree: A 2021 European Investment Bank survey found that the majority of Austrians want their country to do more.
The same court that heard Müllner’s case recently also heard another case brought by a group of senior women concerned about climate change (backed by Greenpeace) suing Switzerland on similar grounds. Older people, and older women in particular, are more vulnerable to extreme heat than other groups. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the four women who brought the lawsuits did not have standing to sue as individuals, but that their group of over 2,000 people did. Climate Senior– And the court ruled that Switzerland’s failure to meet its obligations to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, a goal set out in the Paris Agreement, was a violation of human rights.
But by dismissing the women’s individual cases, the court has set the bar very high for determining who is a true climate victim, Andreas Müller, a professor of human rights law at the University of Basel, told me. Virtually anyone can claim that their life has been made worse by climate change, because in some way it probably has. To avoid the court being inundated with cases, it needs to set a standard. Through him, the court “must decide whether the standard can be met,” Müller said. The connection between rising temperatures and his disability is so clear that unless the court finds him a direct victim of climate change, no one would probably qualify. “I think there is a good chance he will be found.”
Austria has yet to formally respond to the court, but the country is likely to argue that it complies with EU targets, lawyers said. If that argument doesn’t sway the court and Müller prevails, Austria could be forced to tighten its climate laws, giving future litigants more ammunition to argue that EU targets aren’t enough to meet member states’ climate obligations. That could snowball. “Europeans are very worried that certain cases will be lost,” Müller said.
But Müllner’s life will not change: the world is already too warm for him. And a victory in itself will not change the trajectory of climate change. Austria accounts for less than 0.25% of global emissions. Maria Antonia Tigre, director of global climate change litigation at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center, spoke frankly about the use of these lawsuits: “They are tiny and will not bring about as much change as we need.” But each is part of a larger strategy to pressure countries to be more aggressive in addressing climate change. More climate lawsuits could lead countries to change their laws to avoid further legal disputes, Tigre said. More high-profile lawsuits could make it harder for countries to put forward weak proposals in international climate negotiations. It’s all a pressure campaign, and pressure campaigns can work.
Müllner used to work as an energy consultant, so the issue was on his mind even before climate change was big in the news. Müllner became involved in the climate change lawsuit after seeing a phone call posted by Kromer, who is now his lawyer, through the Austrian Multiple Sclerosis Society. He responded within a day. He sees the lawsuit as a civic duty. Climate change affects everyone to a greater or lesser extent, and “if disabled people have problems, it’s almost certain that in a few years everyone else will have the same problems,” he told me. Disabled people are two to four times more likely to be harmed or killed by weather phenomena such as heat waves or floods. But few people have suffered the right combination of specific harms to convince a cautious court. “This is a lawsuit that I filed because I could prove that heat is a problem. It’s medically proven,” he said. “That’s why I can go to the government and say, ‘Do something.'” Others might want to file such lawsuits, but they can’t. He can, and that’s why he does it.
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