School strike for climate

School strike for climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), also known variously as Fridays for Future (FFF), Youth for Climate, Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who take time off from class on Fridays to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.

Quotes

(most recent first)

Swedish climate leader Greta Thunberg donned a mask and joined a socially distanced Fridays for Future protest in Berlin just a day after she and three other youth activists met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government took over the European Council presidency in July, to discuss the planetary emergency... Tweeting about the meeting with the chancellor, Fridays for Future Berlin wrote that "conversations must be followed by deeds—that's why we take to the streets together!"
- Greta Thunberg Kicks Off Third Year of Fridays for Future Protests, by Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams (24 Aug 2020)

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg... urged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to be "brave" in the fight against global warming as she sought to breathe fresh life into a climate movement overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. The 17-year-old... was joined by co-campaigners Luisa Neubauer from Germany and Belgium's Anuna De Wever and Adelaide Charlier, all of whom wore masks as they made their way to the chancellery from Berlin's main train station. During 90 minutes of talks, the young campaigners said they urged Merkel to tackle carbon emissions with the same urgency and drastic measures that leaders have displayed in the battle against COVID-19.
"We want leaders... to be brave enough to think long-term," Thunberg told an outdoor press conference after the meeting. "We want leaders to step up and take responsibility and treat the climate crisis like a crisis." She said Merkel, as the current chair of the EU rotating presidency, had a "huge responsibility but also a huge opportunity" to help the European Union meet its commitments under the Paris climate agreement.
- Greta Thunberg meets Merkel in fresh push for climate action, Marion Payet & Michelle Fitzpatrick, AFP, Jakarta Post, 22 August 2020)

On Thursday, two years to the day after Greta Thunberg first skipped school, she is to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Joining her will be Luisa Neubauer, Anuna de Wever and Adélaïde Charliér, fellow members of the global movement sparked by Thunberg's lone protest against climate change. The four Fridays for Future activists are to use their hour-and-a-half audience with the Chancellor to present a letter demanding EU leaders "stop pretending that we can solve the climate- and ecological crisis without treating it as a crisis."...
Signed by nearly 125,000 people, the letter demands an immediate halt to investments and subsidies in fossil fuels. Fridays for Future is also calling for Germany to bring forward its deadline to phase out coal from 2038 to 2030, and to go carbon-neutral by 2035 instead of 2050.
"The system is not broken, it was built to be unjust. We don't need recovery, we need a reboot," the letter reads, stressing that "black people, indigenous peoples and people of color," have been disproportionately hit by the economic, climate and coronavirus crises... The ministers were criticized for failing to relieve the debt of poorer countries, and according to Energy Policy Tracker, G20 countries have pledged $169 billion (142 billion euros) to fossil fuels since the beginning of the pandemic.
- Fridays for Future: Can they keep the pressure up? Ruby Russell, DW (20 August 2020)

We can have as many meetings as we like, but the will to change is nowhere in sight. Society must start treating this as a crisis...On Thursday 20 August, it will be exactly two years since the first school strike for the climate took place....
Today, leaders all over the world are speaking of an “existential crisis”. The climate emergency is discussed on countless panels and summits. Commitments are being made, big speeches are given. Yet, when it comes to action we are still in a state of denial. The climate and ecological crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction....
We understand the world is complicated and that what we are asking for may not be easy or may seem unrealistic. But it is much more unrealistic to believe that our societies would be able to survive the global heating we’re heading for – as well as other disastrous ecological consequences of today’s business as usual... This mix of ignorance, denial and unawareness is at the very heart of the problem...
The only way forward is for society to start treating the crisis like a crisis... We can still avoid the worst consequences. But to do that, we have to face the climate emergency and change our ways. And that is the uncomfortable truth we cannot escape.
- After two years of school strikes, the world is still in a state of climate crisis denial, Greta Thunberg, Luisa Neubauer, Anuna De Wever and Adélaïde Charlier, The Guardian (19 Aug 2020)

Many people in the US aren't aware of the youth climate movement that was started by 16-year-old Swede Greta Thunberg in August 2018 and has inspired students in countries all across the world to come together to protest for climate action weekly. But the fact that Fridays for Future (FFF) is less well known stateside doesn't mean that young activists in the US are less passionate...
On a rainy Friday in Washington, DC, a small group of teens sit on a fountain on the western side of the Capitol with a clear view of the Washington Monument. Madeline Graham, 16, is prepping her fellow protesters for potential trouble. The Capitol Police might tell them to leave, she says to the five or so protesters around her, but they should stay right where they are. "We have a right to be here,"... Graham firmly believes that the young movement can bring about change in the US. "Any politician who underestimates us won't underestimate us for much longer," she said. "You can't hide from righteous anger." The focus of Friday's protest was the fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest.
- Fridays For Future in the US: A small but determined movement, Carla Bleiker, DW (28 August 2019)

School strike for climate

Quotes

See also