Unprecedented Global Strike; A New Epidemic Movement

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Hannah Steiner

Environmental activist

As countries all around the world woke up, the action spreads.

Unprecedented Global Strike; A New Epidemic Movement

The school strike movement has appeared simultaneously with other environmental movements worldwide. In the U.S., the young activists of Sunrise Movement have pushed to transform climate action into a political reality by calling for a Green New Deal, attracting the support of several legislators and 2020 Democratic presidential candidates And The British group Extinction Rebellion occupied major locations in London for ten days in late April, and their first demand, for the British government to declare a state of “climate emergency,” received approval from parliament on May 1.

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish student whose single-handed protest last August galvanized the global movement, said: “We proved that it does matter what you do and that no one is too small to make a difference.”

Greta became an international role model for all her actions and commitment. She has dedicated every Friday to this cause since August 2018.She spoke to world leaders at the COP24 UN climate summit and at the World Economic Forum, where she told the audience: "I want you to panic."

On Friday 24 may, Hundreds of thousands of students around the world took in global events to draw attention to the fight against climate change. The young generations in more than 128 countries are demanding attention from politicians, international institutions and their elders literally to save the planet.

In the UK, Hundreds of students marched in London's Parliament Square and demanding the government declares a “state of climate emergency” and change the school curriculum to include education about the effects of climate change. They are also asking to be included in decision-making on the subject and are calling for the voting age to be lowered to 16. Other British protests were held in Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Cambridge, Leeds and Oxford.

Many teenagers in Paris take to the streets and warned governments there would be no summer let-up in their efforts to push for stronger action on climate change, as international green campaigners called a global strike for September 20.

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In Luxembourg which is one of the smallest countries in the world, around 10,000 students came together under the slogan "Fridays for Future" to call for climate action as social media was on fire with #FridaysForFuture and #ClimateStrike posts shared by tens of thousands across Europe.

The movement has spread to the United States as Haven Coleman, a 13 year-old from Colorado, brought Thunberg’s movement to the US. She co-founded the US Youth Climate Strike with 13-year-old Alexandria Villaseñor and 16-year-old Isra Hirsi. They arranged the strikes that took place across the country, and The Verge followed along in New York City and San Francisco. Students across the United States walked out of school and into the streets to demand that the adults running the government start fighting back against climate change.

In Berlin, police reported about 20,000 protesters, most of them young students, gathered in a downtown square, waving signs with slogans such as "March now or swim later" and "Climate Protection Report Card: F" before marching through the capital's government quarter with a stop in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office.

Thousands marched through Madrid and more than 50 other Spanish cities. Spain is vulnerable to rising sea levels and rapid desertification.

Thousands more marched on the streets and squares in many cities including Stockholm, Copenhagen, Rome, Vienna, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam and Lisbon, among many others. Hundreds of marches took place also in Asia and the Pacific.

Support for the climate strikes

A number of world leaders have invited Greta to sit down and talk. This move may suggest that the student-led climate movement has achieved the first necessary stage toward success — acceptance by its targets. Adults have backed the school strike movement, with several prominent thinkers and activists including Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and Margaret Atwood supporting the movement’s next event, a global strike on 20 September, saying that “disrupting our normal lives is the only way to secure our future.” Leading scientists and academics had also previously signed an open letter in support of Greta Thunberg and the school strike movement in February.

While Thunberg may have started her strike alone, May 24 proved that people all around the world are in solidarity with her and willing to spread the message. “I’m not planning to stop this movement, and I don’t think anyone else is either,” she told TIME. “We have to start acting now, even if we don’t have all the solutions.”

climate-change schoolstrike schoolstrike4climate Greta-Thunberg globalwarming

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