The Youth Climate Uprising E-Book

David Fopp

• Herausgeber: transcript Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: X-Texte zu Kultur und Gesellschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 753

Beschreibung

Species are going extinct, forests are burning, and children are worried about the future and their peers worldwide. But that is not the whole story: One Friday in 2018, a few young people joined Greta Thunberg to protest, and the global climate strike movement was born. Scientist David Fopp spent 250 Fridays with the newly formed grassroots movements. Together with activists Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille, he offers an insider perspective on how scientists and activists can fight for a just and sustainable global society. The volume also offers both an introduction to ecophilosophy and a unified science of democracy in times of interdependent crises. How can research in all disciplines - from (drama) education and economics to psychology - help with this struggle? And how can we all fight the climate crisis by transforming and deepening democracy?

Leseprobe

Editorial

The supposed “end of history” long ago revealed itself to be much more an end to certainties. More than ever, we are not only faced with the question of “Generation X”. Beyond this kind of popular figures, academia is also challenged to make a contribution to a sophisticated analysis of the time. The series X-TEXTS takes on this task, and provides a forum for thinking with and against time. The essays gathered together here decipher our present moment, resisting simplifying formulas and oracles. They combine sensitive observations with incisive analysis, presenting both in a conveniently, readable form.

David Fopp (PhD in philosophy and education) is a climate justice activist and researches theories of sustainability and societal transformation at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. He researched and taught at the universities of Berlin, Basel, Paris (École Normale Supérieure), and Stockholm (child and youth studies, and drama education).

Isabelle Axelsson is a youth climate justice activist and studied human geography at the University of Stockholm, Sweden.

Loukina Tille is a youth climate justice activist and studies political science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

David Fopp

The Youth Climate Uprising

From the School Strike Movement to an Ecophilosophy of Democracy

Revised and expanded new edition of "Gemeinsam für die Zukunft - Fridays For Future und Scientists For Future", translated from German by Lucy Duggan

In cooperation with Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at https://dnb.dnb.de/

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 (BY-NC-ND) which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material.

First published in 2024 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

© David Fopp

Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld

Cover Illustration: Jana Eriksson

Printed by: Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar

https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839470312

Print-ISBN: 978-3-8376-7031-8

PDF-ISBN: 978-3-8394-7031-2

EPUB-ISBN: 978-3-7328-7031-8

ISSN of series: 2364-6616

eISSN of series: 2747-3775

Contents

Timeline

Introduction

The strangers

Part One: The Young People’s Rebellion – From Mynttorget in Stockholm to the Global Strike

Chapter 1: Swedish BeginningsAugust – October 2018: An idea takes shape

Chapter 2: Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion Start to GrowOctober – November 2018: Civil disobedience and the laws of humanity

Chapter 3: The FoundationsNovember – December 2018: The (climate-)scientific background

Chapter 4: The International Movement DevelopsDecember – January 2019: COP meeting and climate justice

Chapter 5: Davos and the World Economic ForumJanuary – February 2019: What is valuable and what is a science of economy?

Chapter 6: The Prelude to the UprisingFebruary – March 2019: The first international meeting, and the founding of Scientists for Future

Chapter 7: The UprisingMarch – April 2019: The first global strike, and the London occupation

Part Two: The Adults Respond

Chapter 1: The Second Global Strike and the Preparations for the Week for FutureApril – August 2019: The task of civil society

Chapter 2: Smile For Future in Lausanne and Scientists for FutureAugust – September 2019: The task of science

Chapter 3: The Week For FutureSeptember 2019: The coordinated uprising of eight million people across the world

Chapter 4: COP25 in MadridOctober – December 2019: How can we end our fossil society in a fair way?

Chapter 5: Corona, #BlackLivesMatter and the Climate Justice MovementJanuary – September 2020: The crisis and the intersectional, sustainable, global democratic project

Chapter 6: Many Fights, One Heart – #UprootTheSystemOctober 2020 – October 2021: Forests, agriculture, banks, courts, and the political manifesto – all the way to a new theory of democracy

Chapter 7: The Idea of Social Movements and the Journey to Glasgow – What Is the Right Way to Live?November 2020 – December 2021: On a theory of democratic grassroots movements that can change the world

Chapter 8: The War, Fuel, and the Global Social ContractJanuary – August 2022: Towards a new world order to lead us out of the crises

Chapter 9: Education in Times of Crisis – Learning from Young People on the Way to “Centres of Sustainability”January – August 2022: How to change schools and universities – (eco)philosophy for a sustainable democracy

Chapter 10: Global democracy, the Elections, and the FutureSeptember 2022 – June 2023: On forming a global, democratic, sustainable postgrowth society

Part Three: Facing the Future Together – A Conversation with Isabelle Axelsson and Loukina Tille

Contents

Chapter 1: What the Climate Strike Movement is About

Chapter 2: On the Relationship Between Young People and AdultsHow We Can All Write History

Appendix and Summary

What a Global United Climate Movement Could Fight forThe Basic Principles for Social and Political Change

Epilogue

Illustrations

Bibliography

Timeline

2018

20th of August, Monday

Greta Thunberg sits down alone between the two halves of the Swedish parliament building and begins to strike

7th of September, Saturday

At the Rålambshov park, the young strikers announce the founding of #FridaysForFuture

8th of September, Sunday

Elections in Sweden. It will be months before the left-wing/green coalition government is confirmed

13th of September, Friday

First Friday strike under the name #FridaysForFuture

October

The UN special report “IPCC SR1.5” is published, explaining the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of global warming

31st of October, Wednesday

Founding weekend of Extinction Rebellion in London

17th of November, Saturday

The first big blockade of Stockholm by Extinction Rebellion

30th of November, Friday

Roughly 10 000 pupils go on strike in Australia, partly in response to Prime Minister Morrison’s remarks about climate activists. Belgian strikes on Thursdays increase in size

9th of December, Sunday

The first internationally coordinated action by FFF and XR takes place: “Climate Alarm”

12th of December, Wednesday

Greta makes a speech at the COP24 climate summit of the UN in Katowice, Poland

21st of December, Friday

As a reaction to discussions of a carbon tax in parliament, the first largescale strike takes place in Switzerland

2019

18th of January, Friday

The first big strike in Berlin

25th of January, Friday

World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Our house is on fire”

12th of February, Tuesday

IPBES biodiversity report by the UN is published, with alarming statistics

15th of February, Friday

Great Britain and France strike on a grand scale for the first time

13th of March, Wednesday

FFF strike at the EU offices in Strasbourg

15th of March, Friday

The first global strike with around 1.6 million participants

15th of April, Monday

The blockade of central London by Extinction Rebellion beginsIn Stockholm, XR blocks the parliament bridgeGreta speaks at the British parliament after visits to Rome and Brussels

29th of April, Monday

The UK declares a climate emergency

24th of May, Friday (the weekend of the EU elections)

The second global strike

4th-9th of August

The big European FFF meeting SmileForFuture in Lausanne, Switzerland

20th to 27th of September

The Global Week For Future with global strikes together with trade unions and NGOs. Around 8 million young people and adults take part in the strike marches

23rd of September, Tuesday

Greta makes her “How dare you” speech at the UN climate summit in New York

7th of October, Monday

Extinction Rebellion blocks the city centres of London, New York, Paris, and Berlin

29th of November and 6th of December

Fourth global strike, in Stockholm in the suburb of RinkebyIn Madrid, 500 000 people gather around Fridays for Future

2nd-13th of December

COP25 meeting in Madrid

2020

21st-24th of January

World Economic Forum

4th of March

Statement by Scientists for Future on the new EU climate law

16th and 17th of July

Young people from FFF – supported by leading scientists – write a letter to the EU with demands; and 20 activists from the Global South address the G20 states

April to August

The climate justice movement moves online due to the Corona pandemic and listens to the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations

20th to 21st of August

Two years have passed since the first day of the strikes and the activists return – wearing masks – to Mynttorget. Young people present demands entitled #FaceTheClimateEmergency

25th of September

Global Day of Climate Action

2021

25th of March, Friday

Global strike, #PeopleNotProfit

24th of September, Friday

Global strike, #UprootTheSystem, part 1

22nd of October, Friday

Global strike, #UprootTheSystem, part 2

31st of October-13th of November

COP26 meeting in Glasgow

2022

25th of March, Friday

Global strike, #PeopleNotProfit

1st-3rd of June

Stockholm+50: UN environment conference, 50 years after the first conference when Olof Palme called for a law against ecocide

9th of September, Friday

Strike in Stockholm before the elections, exactly four years since the beginning of the strikes

11th of September

Elections in Sweden

23rd of September, Friday

Global strike, #PeopleNotProfit

2023

14th of January, Friday

Strike in Lützerath, Germany

3rd of March, Friday

Global strike, #TomorrowIsTooLate

9th of June, Friday

Last school day for many activists in Stockholm, after five years of school strike for climate

Introduction

Children are sitting on the ground in front of their national parliaments or town halls. In Stockholm. Bern. Kathmandu. New York. Kabul. Manaus. Berlin. They are striking for the climate and for their future, in city squares and online. And they are calling attention to a democratic mistake: the rainforests are burning and being cut down. The banks are investing in the fossil industry. Across the world, democracies need to be transformed, and a new way of living together globally needs to be found – and they, as children, have no say in this, even though it affects their lives the most. So now they are sitting there, refusing to accept this any longer.

How should we react to this? I ask myself this question in August 2018, when I leave the rooms where I teach at Stockholm University and go for the first time to meet Greta Thunberg and her fellow strikers, who are sitting outside the parliament. When I meet them on one of the first days of the strike, I know a lot about the climate crisis, but in fact, it becomes clear in the next weeks that I know astonishingly little. I understand the crisis, but still not really. And so I decide early on, when Fridays For Future is just being formed, that I will come back every Friday for the seven hours that the young people spend striking at the edge of Stockholm’s Old Town. I don’t want to play along anymore: this strike is an emergency brake, interrupting work and university life. Therefore, I follow their call for non-cooperation with the “fossil society”; at least for one day every week.

These encounters with the regulars at the school strikes in Mynttorget – the square close to the parliament – will change all our lives. Very soon, we’ll be meeting the most important climate researchers in the world. I’ll be getting to know the children’s way of thinking and seeing grief and despair, but also great empathy and excitement about the growing global network which is a constant work in progress, and which will go on to make history as #FridaysForFuture/Climate Strike (FFF). Mynttorget in Stockholm will become the hub of the global movement. And gradually I will try to help bring together a worldwide movement in the world of adults, beyond FFF. Mynttorget is where we will cofound Scientists For Future, and from there we will organise the Week For Future, with 8 million participants.

One task is central throughout these weeks. We need to develop and carry out a plan to make the world sustainable, fair and democratic within around ten years. We shouldn’t simply be patting the young people of FFF on the shoulder. As a society, we must react to what they want and give them a secure future. And in that sense, their story is also ours. It is the story of our shared future.

This story has two sides. On the one hand, it is a sad story. Probably the saddest story imaginable. It is the story of hundreds of species which are being eradicated, forests that are being razed and burnt, hundreds of thousands of people who are fleeing drought and floods (Wallace-Wells 2019). And above all, it is the story of children and young people everywhere in the world getting information from social media and worrying every day, dreading conflicts over water and food, a kind of panic which never quite disappears. What will it look like for us, they ask themselves, when we’re as grown up as those two-legged creatures who belong to the same species as us – the ones who are in charge? In a world that is two, three or four degrees warmer, with the danger of irreversible tipping points and feedback loops in the climate system (Lenton 2019), life will be hell for many people, especially those in the regions known as the Global South. This is also the story of established NGOs working in parallel, which have tried many things and still not managed to change policy. And it is the story of politicians and highly specialised scientists who know all this but who barely do anything because they seem to be in a state of paralysis.

But that is not the whole story. If we look more closely, a window opens to a positive mission, maybe the biggest challenge we can picture. It has just begun, or rather, it began in an unbearably warm week in August 2018. That is when a few children and teenagers from various suburbs of Stockholm decided to join Greta – the teenager they had read about in the news; the child armed with a sign reading “School Strike for the Climate”, between the huge stone blocks of the Swedish parliament, on strike. At that moment, a story starts which only develops slowly at first, with very little happening for weeks and months, but then, led by the Swedish “gang of rebels”, grows to become one of the biggest ever international youth movements for the environment. Six months later, on the 15th of March, 1.6 million children leave their classrooms in protest against the world of adults. Then in September, eight million young people and adults come together across continents and to some extent across generations to go on strike together.

It’s like something from a storybook, as one of the regular Stockholm strikers says. Not the widespread narrative about a single child fighting alone, but the story of different groups to which the young people belong. A story which has not yet been told; one which is also about friendships, about solutions to political and activist challenges, which brings together young people from all corners of the world. And it may be the story of a group of young people, but it is also about their attempt to wake up the adults, to work together with them, and to make their task clear to them, not least the scientists who have gradually joined together in the huge network of Scientists For Future. It is the story which we now have to tackle together and which we have to translate into reality in the next fifteen years across the world: the story of a global democratic transformation in all areas of life, in which we all help to create a life worth living with enough resources for all and without going beyond the limits of the planet: global heating, loss of biodiversity, pollution and acidification of the oceans.

But it is also a story with a long, complicated backstory, including the indigenous peoples who have long been fighting for their way of life and for the protection of nature, despite constant repression from governments and financial interests. In particular, it is also the story of emancipatory grassroots movements, the fight against colonialism, protests by the women’s movement over the last century, and the struggle of workers and BIPOC communities (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), who want justice and the protection of human rights for everyone. Without these civil disobedience movements and the fight for human rights and for a democratic approach to one another (as well as to nature and its value), this adventure would not now be conceivable. This backstory is explicitly part of the young people’s frame of reference when they decide to sit down and go on strike.

It is important to understand this story. Now a new chapter can begin: that of the adults coming together across the world, beyond Fridays For Future. There have been suggestions as to how this chapter of organised protest by adults might look – with the “Week For Future” and the COP meeting of the UN in Madrid, which are discussed in this book. There, young people have begun to connect with grassroots groups to become a unified global movement.

But the politics have not changed, and nor have the rules, the thinking and the economic orientation which plague and threaten nature and humanity. Despite the Paris Agreement, the UN says that the promises made by governments, with their NDCs (national plans to reduce emissions), will still lead to almost three degrees of global heating – even if these promises are kept, which is hardly likely (Chestney 2021). And there it is again, the sad story. An earth which is three degrees warmer will be unbearable for hundreds of millions of people (and billions of animals); ultimately it will be unbearable for the majority (Xu et al. 2020). And that world will become reality within the lifetimes of the main characters in this story, if we do not immediately enact “far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” (IPCC report, 8th of October 2018). Diffuse fears about this future world shape children’s lives like nothing else. We can resolve those fears if we treat the crisis as a crisis. We humans can look ahead and plan with the help of science and the imagination. And when those two work together well, there is probably no stronger force on this planet.

On the making of this book – its structure and the people who worked on it, science and politics

The narrative form used in the first part of this book is hopefully more fitting than a purely factual text when it comes to explaining the facts and problems faced so far by the young people and us scientists, and those which now define our task.

Between the first strike day and the first global uprising of the 15th of March, with 1.6 million children, there were 26 Fridays in Mynttorget in Stockholm, a complex social fabric was woven and became the basis for the global network. This is where arguments with politicians take place, and where the most famous scientists gather. More and more cameras appear, along with people from the media. This is where placards are painted and comments by politicians are discussed. This is the place to which the young people return after their travels to the WEF in Davos and the COP in Poland, full of their adventures. And this is where friendships are forged and trust is built: a core group emerges, one that wants to change the world. Altogether, there will be more than 250 Fridays in the small square at the edge of Stockholm’s old town, but also via the internet and the phone; five years with the most active young people and scientists across the world, who soon join, in Swiss towns, in Uganda, Australia, Brazil and Canada. Thousands of decisions must be made at this site of democratic experiment: what should the movement be like in the first place and how can a global network be knitted together? Which aims are the most important? What is the role of science? And above all: when might the strike end? When would the world be a place where young people could feel comfortable and safe?

This narrative insight into the history of the climate movements (as well as the sister movement Extinction Rebellion) is told from my subjective perspective as a lecturer at Stockholm University who grew up in Sweden and Switzerland and knows both cultures. In that sense, this is a book about the role of science and education in relation to political activism. The focus is not on a single discipline such as environmental science or climate science, but on the attempt to approach that subject together with other university subjects: philosophy, political science, economics, psychology, and education, for example.

During these months, I also try to incorporate my experiences in Mynttorget into my teaching at the university as senior lecturer in drama education and youth studies. I use the young people’s speeches in my seminars on social and ecological sustainability, education and democracy, and together with the students I try to use role play and other research methods drawn from the arts in order to understand what is scientific, and what is true. For instance, I ask them to write plays about the legal cases brought by children across the world against their own governments, because they are doing too little to prevent the climate crisis.

What exactly is the role of the university in this shared history? In terms of method, this book might be seen as a kind of auto-ethnographic study, reflecting on the development of the new movements for climate justice and on university life. In the spirit of post-qualitative research, the central insight is that we as scientists are also entangled in problematic power relations and that we have to expose them and respond to them actively, rather than pretending to be neutral (Leavy 2009). Instead of making the young people the object of a traditional empirical sociological investigation, my approach starts by trying to work together with them to ask how society could be changed and a global sustainable democracy created.

This story is then followed by a collective view of the past and future, reflecting many conversations with Loukina Tille and Isabelle Axelsson, from Sweden and Switzerland, two of the young activists at the centre of the global climate movement. What is the movement about, and what are its demands? What does “climate justice” mean, and what about “Listen to the science?” And finally: what role do all of us have, and what is our task?

From the beginning, reflections on what had happened at high speed were an important part of the movement. The Sweden-Switzerland axis was crucial in that context, and so were the ideas and initiatives of Loukina Tille and Isabelle Axelsson. When they begin to strike, they are still school pupils who have suddenly left their classrooms. Now they are studying politics and human geography at university in Zürich and Stockholm. Loukina Tille, from Lausanne, helped build the climate movement in Switzerland. Already very early on, she was in contact with Isabelle and the other Stockholm activists, and she regularly led global meetings of all strikers, organised the first international meeting of four hundred young people at the University of Lausanne, and was one of the organisers of the global strikes. At around the same time, Isabelle Axelsson joined the Stockholm strike. Together with Loukina, she planned and carried out trips to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, built up the global organisation with her peers, and met with Loukina at the conferences in Lausanne and at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Without these two, and their interest in exchange with science and with scientists globally, the movement would look different.

Towards an ecophilosophy of democracy

This book also offers an introduction to ecophilosophy and a unified science of democracy in times of interdependent sustainability crises. This is the case not only in the narrower sense of a philosophy of climate ethics, but as an attempt to explore and present interrelated ideas about our place in nature, and the creation of a convivial, just world. It includes questions of moral and political philosophy, highlighting that the idea of justice should always be complemented by the notion of being humane, making relations and structures of domination visible and opening a world where everyone can experience the dignity of us all; thereby repairing and creating a common fabric of integrity which links us to nature as vulnerable creatures – and gives us a unique common task to create a world in which we can live together as equal and free democratic animals (see appendix for such a political program and a new framework for a convivial, global democracy).

This leads to the enterprise of a new science of sustainable democracy, integrating insights from many sciences, from neuropsychology to political science, exploring the substance of democracy and how this relates to its formal aspects: focusing on the idea of meeting on an equal footing beyond structures and relations of domination (gender, class, ethnicity etc.).

What if we could explore all of this – even in a creative way (arts and drama education) – at every school and university, in every village and town? The final chapters sketch the idea of such a prototype centre as a possible core of all educational institutions. Trying to understand the movements as well as university life, the book explores what a sustainable, democratic approach to the world could be – and what it would mean to create the social (political, economic, cultural) spaces needed to connect with each other and the environment, to produce enough resources in a regenerative way for all to live a life in dignity.

The chapters follow the chronology of the movements, but also give an introduction to the basics of earth sciences (first chapters), economics (chapter on Davos), justice, global ethics and politics (chapter on corona and Madrid), sociology (chapter on Glasgow), democracy (chapter on the “many fights, one heart”), and especially education and philosophy (chapter on education).

On this journey, one main question is: what is this endeavour of science, and scientific research and education which leads us into and maybe leads us out of the crises? What does this exploration of humans as embodied, social, imaginative beings living in problematic power relations mean for curricula, teaching methods, research ethics, and for the institutional reframing of these topics, leading to a new picture of scientific endeavour as a regenerative and transformative exploration?

The intergenerational challenge and the idea of a united, global movement

Fridays for Future was founded by Greta together with Mina, Edit, Eira, Tindra and Morrigan on the 7th of September, 2018. It is a movement initiated by young people, and that has consequences. As Roger Hart’s Unicef text (1992) so wisely delineates, there is a whole “staircase” of possibilities for intergenerational cooperation: from projects initiated and carried out only by young people, to projects initiated by adults and organised for children. #FFF is a “youth-led” movement, initiated and led by young people. Young people have the right to organise themselves. Adults can help – if they are asked; or if they organise themselves as “parents”, “artists”, “scientists”, and so on.

So adults have the task of giving young people confidence that they believe in them and in their ideas, and that they believe them capable of acting independently. A universal power imbalance between children and adults comes into play here, according to the Swedish theatre director Suzanne Osten (2009), who shaped the culture of her country. The “grown-ups” have the responsibility to make sure that the younger ones are doing well. The well-being of the younger ones has priority. The older ones can listen and help. But above all – according to the fundamental idea of this book – they must continue working on the “hand” of the united climate movements, which is made up of “fingers” such as Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, the NGOs and so on. Patting the young people on the shoulder is clearly not sufficient.

The question is then: what if we joined together as “People for Future” in a global, democratic, united movement or network that anyone can simply join (see the appendix of this book) – respecting and celebrating the existing movements and their history and identity? A movement which stops the Amazon rainforest from being cut down and the German coal power plants from running, which prevents the Swiss banks from financing the fossil industry and which comes together worldwide to build a sustainable, fair society, a movement which takes care of everyone’s needs and ends the injustices of colonial history – with regenerative forestry and agriculture founded on plant-based products, a fossil-free public transport system, a global network of renewable energy and a really democratic economy that helps everyone flourish and stays within the limits of the planet; this is roughly the image of the future towards which Scientists for Future are working. And strengthening a sustainable democracy beyond the nation-state, being fair to the Global South and eliminating power relations of domination based on gender, class, and ethnicity. If we look closely, this is the movement that has emerged in the last five years.

The task

“Are you happy with how things are going?” asks a reporter from the Financial Times in March 2019, when a million children are on strike. “We are happy when we see the young people who are standing by our side everywhere and doing the same as us. Not going along with it anymore. That makes us happy,” say the young people. “But nothing has happened yet,” they add. “Nothing has changed. Emissions are rising across the world.” Even in the wealthiest countries, such as Switzerland, Germany and Sweden, emissions are hardly going down. Sweden has a green Deputy Prime Minister when the young people begin their strike. They strike in front of these parliaments because governments do not, in this sense, take the science seriously. If Sweden adhered to the Paris Agreement, which almost all states across the world signed in 2015, its parliament would have to pass laws reducing emissions every year by more than twelve percent, say scientists at the University of Uppsala (Anderson et al 2020). The young people are on strike because with their talk of “climate neutrality” and “net zero emissions in 2050”, governments are precisely not keeping to the Paris Agreement. They are on strike because they understand that the populations of all countries would have to rise up and join together in solidarity, if a dignified life is to be made possible for all people on this planet.

We were actually all united – or rather, our governments were united – when it came to complying with the Paris Agreement. This obliges us to do everything to limit the rise in temperatures to well under two and if possible under 1.5 degrees. The IPCC-SR1.5 report, which was accepted by all UN states, shows that we will already miss this target in three or four years if we continue as we are: that we have an absurdly tiny amount of CO2 emissions left (2020: around 350 Gt). And the Gap Report by the UN shows that the established and contractually planned fossil infrastructure (coal, oil, gas) will cause around double the permitted emissions in the next ten years (UNEP Production GAP report 2019). We are on the way to a much warmer world, already in the lifetime of the children who are currently going out into the streets, with up to three billion people fleeing from regions which have become uninhabitable and too hot (Xu et al. 2020), and with large proportions of the glaciers melting, so that water supplies across the world are under threat. That is why Scientists for Future say: We need systemic change, and all of us must take action – and take to the streets.

This book outlines how that could work. Thanks are due to Jana Eriksson, who took many of the photographs included here and who is herself part of the Stockholm climate movements.

The parts of the book which describe the first two years were written in 2020 (with the corresponding scientific data) as part of the German book Gemeinsam für die Zukunft (Fopp et al. 2021); the chapters about the last three years were written in Summer 2023. All activists, no matter their age, are mentioned by their first name, also as a measure of safety; the only exceptions are those who are internationally known.

There are many things to which this book is unable to do justice – with its Stockholmian, European, privileged, and restricted perspective. In that sense, this European history of Fridays for Future and Scientists for Future is not a work of journalistic research, and it should and will be told by many more different voices (see Nakate 2021). However, hopefully, this story can inspire to action and to some extent explore and explain what is important to this group of young people and scientists, and what that could mean for all of us.

Many people are concerned about the state of our world but don’t know how to engage. What can each one of us do? Following the movements, we can also see the history of bottom-up initiatives which grow with the help of the grassroots movements, which are open for everyone, individuals and organisations. Together, they can be seen as a united program to change our world: including the Doughnut Economy Lab, the Fossil Fuel Treaty, the Faculty for a Future, Earth4All, bioregions, etc. But still, the central idea is that we need to come together as a humane, global grassroots movement.

The strangers

It is mid-July 2018. An ordinary day in the summer holidays. Loukina is out walking near Lausanne, stealing a few cherries and thinking about the next school year, which will be her last. Next summer she will go to university, maybe in Zurich. Images of forest fires have been flashing up in the news. It is unbearably hot. In Sweden, the trees are burning like matches. Children in hundreds of small villages all over the world hear about it too. How can this go on, they wonder. And some young people in Zurich are having similar thoughts while people jump from the high walls of the footpath to cool off in the Limmat river. The same goes for their peers in Uganda, Australia, the Philippines, in Brazil, Mexico, England, the US, Ireland and Scotland, in Italy, Finland, Japan and Germany, in Ukraine, Bangladesh, in Kenya and Argentina, all of them having these worries. They are all around seventeen, the same generation. Balder is in Holland, and he too, has a frown on his face; he will be moving to Stockholm in the next week, to spend a few months there as an Erasmus student. And there they are, spread across different parts of the Swedish capital: Tindra, Isabelle, Ell, Simon, Mina, Minna, Edit, Eira, Morrigan, Mayson, Melda, Edward, Astrid, Vega, Ebba and Greta; and so on and so forth. They don’t know each other yet, any more than the other young people do, but they soon will. Some have been going to the same school for years, without noticing each other, or they have passed each other countless times in the metro stations in the city. They share the same fear and the same fury. The adults are wrecking the environment. They are systematically destroying the planet.

In Mynttorget, the square at the edge of Stockholm’s Old Town, it is still quiet. If you look closely, the two huge flowerpots seem to be slightly tense. Waiting. They are watched by the oversized blocks of stone which form the royal palace wall, bordering the square. They too are waiting. Something is coming. And not just a forest fire. They are waiting for the “Fridays” to come and give them an important role.

Fridays For Future doesn’t exist yet, but they all exist as individuals with their worries. They sit in their rooms, looking at pictures of floods and droughts on their phones, absurd images of forests being cut down and bleak coal mines. And of politicians not doing anything. They still feel powerless. What are they supposed to do? They don’t even have the right to vote yet – how can they change anything on their own?

In the coming autumn, the evenings in Stockholm quickly get shorter, including in the square in front of the palace. Then the evening light shines through the windows of the most expensive flats in the country, which are visible from the square. They have a view of the bay which shapes central Stockholm. Standing at those windows, the opponents of these teenagers enjoy the thing that costs so much: the breath-taking experience of nature. It is here and in similar houses in Sydney, New York, Tokyo and Frankfurt that we find the bosses of BP, Exxon, and Shell, but also the financial speculators who make money from coal, gas and oil, the media moguls, and a few politicians, too. They own a large proportion of the world’s wealth – in Sweden as in other countries (Cervenka 2022). They can control where investment goes and what is produced, and how. Soon the children will gather into a crowd, equal in number to the power brokers of the “fossil society”. At least one or two of their own children will be among the demonstrators.

But there is a much bigger actor, one that is far less conspicuous. It is the rest of the population, who are walking past the children in the square in front of the palace, a whole variety of fellow citizens. The young people turn to them from the beginning. They want to change the situation by inserting themselves into the workings of power, using their bodies to jam the mechanism. Often, when I meet these young people in the next months, I think: they are so brave to do this every week in spite of their fears, plucking up the courage to go to Mynttorget every Friday (and to all the other squares across the world) and stay there for seven hours, accepting that they might be punished at school. And my other thought is: we need the older ones, people like you and me. Many people are still hesitating but are interested; a good number of those have to join them. Between the teenagers and those who are directly responsible for this fossil economy, ideology and politics, there are all the rest of us. This book is also about them, and especially about those who remember the climate briefly, frown worriedly, and then don’t know what they are meant to do and just carry on as usual. If all of us join the children and strike or take political action, the course of history might change.

But we haven’t got that far yet. There is still nothing for us to respond to. It is still July 2018, and the young people don’t know anything about each other. One of them has something planned, though. On this same summer day, while Loukina eats cherries and Isabelle works in an ice cream kiosk, one of their peers is sitting on the wooden boards of the veranda in Stockholm, with a piece of wood in front of her that is supposed to become a placard. It’s clear what it should say: “School strike for the climate”. The “for” has to fit into the small space between the other words, which squash it from above and below. It is symmetrical, clear, and distinct.

Part One: The Young People’s Rebellion – From Mynttorget in Stockholm to the Global Strike

Contents

Chapter 1: Swedish BeginningsAugust – October 2018: An idea takes shape

Chapter 2: Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion Start to GrowOctober – November 2018: Civil disobedience and the laws of humanity

Chapter 3: The FoundationsNovember – December 2018: The (climate-)scientific background

Chapter 4: The International Movement DevelopsDecember – January 2019: COP meeting and climate justice

Chapter 5: Davos and the World Economic ForumJanuary – February 2019: What is valuable and what is a science of economy?

Chapter 6: The Prelude to the UprisingFebruary – March 2019: The first international meeting, and the founding of Scientists for Future

Chapter 7: The UprisingMarch – April 2019: The first global strike, and the London occupation

Mynttorget framed by the Swedish Parliament on the left and the Royal Palace on the right.

Chapter 1: Swedish Beginnings

August – October 2018: An idea takes shape

Preparations

The most beautiful room in our institute at Stockholm University juts out of the façade at a height of five metres, surrounded by three glass walls, looking out over a small wood. This is where I am supposed to be planning the new semester, and especially a workshop on the topic of the climate crisis and sustainability. “Do you have any ideas?” I ask a sheep which is standing outside in the woods, looking at me through the glass. How should we explain the urgency of the climate crisis without the students switching off? So that they, the future teachers of Sweden, will dare to make space for empathy with other people and for fascination with nature? What do the school children themselves think about our way of treating nature, globally? Start there; that could work. Make a quick note. Opening my computer, I notice a news item online. A child is sitting alone in front of the parliament, in the centre of the city, less than twenty minutes away, on strike.

The strike before the strike – the first meeting

When I visit Greta and the other activists for the first time during their strike in front of the parliament, Fridays For Future does not yet exist; there is only the basic idea for a strike. They sit between the two parts of the grandiose parliament building every day for the last three weeks before the Swedish elections, not only on Fridays. It is a Tuesday in late August, and it is unbearably hot. I sit down and ask them what they have to say to us all.

After seeing the news item, I asked my university colleagues: “Should we head over there? We should at least listen.” On the Monday morning before that, Greta had picked up her sign, which now read “School strike for the climate” in big letters, in black and white, and cycled to the parliament, where she found a place right in the middle of the centre of Swedish political power, unrolled her mat and then sat down alone on the ground.

Now she sits there and says: “This is a crisis.” A few other youngsters and two or three adults are sitting a little way away. “A crisis?” “Yes, a crisis.” There is an A4 sheet of paper in front of them, covered in scientific facts to prove it – that is, they show what we adults, or some of us, have done to the environment over the last fifty years.

It is only much later that I really read that piece of paper from the first days. In front of the parliament in the heat of late summer, I only glance at it. I see a few familiar and a few entirely unfamiliar numbers and comments. The whole page is covered in fine print. We have to reduce emissions in richer countries by at least 10-15 percent every year, from today. We humans have eradicated 83 percent of the population of land mammals. We are now… The information is so condensed that it could make you dizzy. They are just letters and numbers, but behind that is the pain caused by humans to other humans and animals. How can we deal with it? Maybe that is why it takes me months to look at this piece of paper properly. It is simply hard to digest. But it is full of the knowledge the state ought to be disseminating and teaching to pupils at school. Weeks later, when we are meeting every Friday and a climate scientist joins us from the university, it becomes clear to me how well-read Greta and some of the other activists are; but it’s not just that they know the literature, it’s also that they understand the connections, and above all that they can judge their importance: what is the central point, what are the greatest risks, what is our role as adults who are wreaking destruction we could prevent. I am the one who is learning here. In particular, they are calling attention to calculations of risk: which are the numbers the politicians are working with less than ten metres away from us in the parliament; and is that really responsible or are they kidding themselves, ignoring risks such as tipping points, gambling on technologies that don’t exist, closing their eyes to UN reports? Are they passing the buck to the children’s generation when it comes to reshaping society?

I discuss the meaning of these facts in the next months with my colleagues at the various relevant institutes at the university. They agree with the young strikers.

But for now, it is enough for them to say that we are in a crisis and that the adults ought to present it that way too. I have brought kiwi smoothies in plastic cups; I feel ashamed of the plastic rubbish I’ve brought along and after talking to them for a while, I leave again, utterly confused, moved, and perturbed. Above all, I think: these young people on strike are not just there as themselves, they’re also making space for an idea; the idea that no one has to accept the way the world is behaving. Even if we are small, we can step into the middle of this machinery, refuse to follow the rules of the adults, and skip school.

Half an eternity later, when a bitterly cold winter has arrived and the gang of rebels has been striking in Mynttorget for twenty Fridays, right there in front of the parliament we will all build a snow elephant, or in fact the left foot of a snow elephant, and laugh and complain about the journalists who ask their investigative questions: whether the young people are being controlled from behind the scenes, whether they earn money with their activism, and so on. Greta and the others will have travelled to Katowice, to Strasbourg and to Davos, and they will have made speeches which are broadcast around the world. But at that time, on that August day, we obviously know nothing about that. There are still just a few children sitting between the stone blocks of political power.

When might they be able to end their strike, I wonder. I definitely have to come back and hear more from the ones whose future is at stake. And even in these first days, that’s not just Greta. Because one by one, others have joined her. Tindra, Mina, Edit, Eira, Morrigan, Melda, Mayson and so on. There are still not many of them, but they make all the difference. Greta’s idea has taken hold. The core group of young people have found each other, and they are making plans.

The beginning of Fridays For Future – on a Saturday

And so begins the actual story of Fridays For Future – on a Saturday. That is when the children’s three-week strike becomes something else, #FFF, a movement. This is because the Swedes are supposed to be electing a new parliament on the following day, a Sunday – and so, a coalition of climate activist groups has announced a demonstration. At the edge of the city centre in the notorious Rålambshov Park, there is a small stone amphitheatre. There we all gather, maybe a thousand people, listening to songs and to speeches about the climate crisis.

Suddenly the group of strikers around Greta are announced; they are starting to be well known after their three weeks of daily striking. Three other schoolchildren walk with her into the open space. “Hej.” “Hej,” everyone answers. “Please get your phones out,” says Greta. “I will now switch to English and make an announcement.” A pause. I rummage around for my phone and press “record”. “Hej, I am Greta Thunberg, and this is Mina, Morrigan, and Edit. We have school-striked for the climate for the last three weeks. Yesterday was the last day. But we will go on with the school strike every Friday as from now, we will sit outside the Swedish parliament until Sweden is in line with the Paris Agreement. We urge all of you to do the same: sit outside your parliament or local government wherever you are [...]. Everyone is welcome, everyone is needed. Please join in. Thank you.” Many people post the video. Some of those who see it will start to strike. And they are not in the suburbs of Stockholm, but in Brussels, Zurich, Berlin, Melbourne, and Rio. Meanwhile, Greta goes home and makes a short film of her own, which remains pinned at the top of her twitter account for months afterwards. In a small wood, she records her basic idea: sit down in front of the parliaments, every Friday; the situation is so urgent that the children have to do something. She ends this appeal with the hashtag #FridaysForFuture.

28th of August: The French environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, resigns in protest at Emmanuel Macron’s climate policies.

Mynttorget

The strikers have invented or created two things, the idea of the strike – and their life on the square, Mynttorget, as a special place, a kind of democratic space. This is where the movement will come into being. The police direct them to the square. They are not to sit directly between the parliament buildings: Mynttorget is directly in front of the parliament, or just beyond it if you are coming from the seat of the government, the Rosenbad; it is crammed in between the royal palace, the Old Town, and the parliament. At the beginning of September, the strikers are still finding their way. Everything is unfamiliar. Because it is a school strike, it takes place during school hours, from eight in the morning till three in the afternoon. What should they do with those seven hours on the square? If not school, then what? Often, the ten regular Fridays For Future strikers sit quietly, leaning against the wall in front of the parliament, enjoying the autumn air. The atmosphere is serious. They are aware that they are meant to be at school and that they are taking a risk; punishment is a possibility. A few fish jump out of the water of the Mälaren lake; the royal guard marches past. Now and again, a seagull circles their heads, or even a sea eagle. Sometimes there is silence for many minutes. Then someone suggests a game or tells a story. Politicians walk past and disappear into their parliamentary offices without saying hello. Buses pass by. Sometimes a car stops, leaves them a crate of bananas, and drives off with a friendly beep of the horn.

A generation rises up

It is a whole generation that is rising up, slowly but surely. It has already been simmering for a few months. In the USA, the Sunrise Movement is growing (Holthaus 2020). In a few months, it will persuade the young Democrat representative from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to propose a “Green New Deal”: an ambitious proposal for reaching zero emissions in the energy sector within ten years, creating green jobs and introducing social security systems (Klein 2019). The young people in Mynttorget take a curious and critical view of the idea of the “Green New Deal”. Is it a serious endeavour to deal with the climate crisis, or just an attempt to kickstart the economy? Some of the Sunrise teenagers have forced the American state into a legal case during the last few months, because it is not facing up to the climate crisis and is risking the lives of future generations (“Juliana v US”; see https://www.youthvgov.org). In the Netherlands, too, teenagers sue the government for doing too little in the face of a catastrophic climate crisis. And they win. (On the possibility of changing the law through cases brought by young people, for a sustainable future, see Holthaus 2020.) Close to Utrecht, ten-year-old Lilly (@lillyspickup) goes out walking and becomes famous for her funny video clips, in which she urges everyone to prevent and pick up plastic litter. Lilly becomes a permanent “member” of FFF and meets the youngsters from Sweden at the EU parliament. But right now, they still don’t know anything about her, or anything about each other; they haven’t come to Mynttorget yet.

Still, these young people are standing on strong shoulders. Already for decades, grassroots movements in the Global South, led particularly by women and indigenous people, have been breaking a path for them. They have literally been getting in the way of the oil and coal industry in Ecuador, Canada, Australia and near Manaus in the rainforest of Brazil (see Margolin 2020).

The invention

What awaits the young people at Mynttorget? Most of all, a basic idea. From the beginning, the group has established what will become the core of the young climate movement. It will still be weeks and months before I quite understand this, so familiar am I with the old patterns of activism and political commitment. The young people have invented something new. #FFF is an invention in the best sense of the word. And it only has a few ingredients: the schoolchildren, the parliament, striking on Fridays, the A4 factsheet, the hashtag #FridaysForFuture; and the sign. That might seem obvious. But it is a very special combination of ingredients.

FFF as a movement is directed at someone; it addresses those in power: the protesters sit in front of parliament. They are not blocking petrol stations or coal power stations, they are not striking at home or in front of their schools, but in front of power, the powerful. They dare to make a direct approach to those who have responsibility. Through this, they can focus the full energy of hundreds of thousands of people, they can become the voice of a generation which is rising up. With Occupy, ten years earlier, some of us occupied squares in general, but not parliaments. The young people establish direct communication with those responsible. That gives the movement a target, not only in spatial terms, as a meeting point for people in cities, but also politically: “The rules must change,” Greta says early on, in her first speech in Helsinki.

Ingredient number two: they rebel. FFF is a rebellion, because the movement chooses Friday. It is a real strike, not a demonstration. Goodbye to the giant demonstrations of the 90s and 00s, which often just stopped after a while. School attendance is a legal requirement, and by breaking that requirement, the young people demonstrate the urgency of their cause and prove their determination, refusing to cooperate with a system that makes their own future impossible. That too is new (or at least rare – during the American civil rights movement, young people used similar conflict strategies; see Chenoweth/Stephan 2012): a collective act of civil disobedience by children. But the school strike is a nonviolent rebellion, and anyone can join. People can also start by themselves; usually, no one can demonstrate on their own.

The third ingredient: Greta always places her A4 sheet of facts next to her on the ground. The children are not proposing a political manifesto in which they only argue for one stance or for specific measures, but are instead pointing out the science, the overwhelming climate research, the IPCC reports, and the goals to which all the states in the Paris Agreement have committed themselves. That is not negotiable. This means that a radical compass is available to everyone – one which the global community has already agreed on. Furthermore, FFF becomes hugely educational: the young strikers reach hundreds of thousands of people, spreading knowledge about the key facts, not only regarding the mechanisms behind global heating, but also more broadly about our relationship with living nature and about global justice. They can use their factsheet to show that they are on strike against an education system that doesn’t take itself seriously. That all contrasts with earlier political movements which quickly became mired in policy disputes.

Fourthly: there is the strike sign, always easily visible. That means that the young people are not only addressing the people in power in front of the parliament, but are also turning in the other direction to all schoolchildren and the whole population, calling on everyone to join them. “Everyone is welcome, everyone is needed.” Anyone passing by, the entire public, is being addressed. They literally don’t need to cross any thresholds. They just have to stop walking.

Fifthly: The young people established #FridaysForFuture as a hashtag, not as an association or organisation. They will use social media like no other movement before them. They constitute a grassroots movement, not a hierarchical NGO, conscious about injustices between different parts of the planet. All children in the world can and should be part of it. A generation is rising up. 

At the Swedish elections on the 8th of September, the Social Democrats win 28 percent of the vote, the centre-right Moderates 19 percent, the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats 17 percent, the green liberal Centre Party 8, the Left 8, the Christian Democrats 6, the Liberals 5 and the Greens 4 percent. Negotiations begin, and will continue into January, until another Green-Red coalition government is established, supported by the liberals and the green (neo-)liberals.

The first young people join – the gang of rebels comes together

During these days, a group forms which will work together closely in the next months and years – a small, but very particular group, the rebels of Mynttorget. At first, there are five, and later on ten young people who get the global movement underway. The media, which only focuses on one of them, misses the real main character: the group of young people to which Greta belongs.

It is early morning on a Friday in September. Greta comes to the square at eight, as always. Slightly later, the “regulars”, as they are soon called, arrive from the old town. “I saw an article in the news about Greta and thought: She can’t sit there completely alone.” “Yes, I also saw it in the news. I’d known about the climate crisis for a long time, but not what I should do. There was nowhere to go. Then I thought immediately, I’m going to go there. Clicking on petitions, that won’t save the world.” Many of them say that they saw a child their own age sitting on the ground because the climate was getting hotter and the environment and human beings were suffering. And that they couldn’t accept that. Some of them had got the tip about the strike from their grandmothers.

And so they sat down as well, hesitantly at first, gradually becoming more resolute. “We had it as a topic at school, basically a week about the end of the world. And then there was a break. And then a new topic. That felt surreal. For such a huge problem.” “At first, I just wanted to sit here for three weeks. But when you understand how serious the situation is, you can’t stop. So we went on. I went to the school administration and said: I’m not coming in. It’s the last year of school, but I have to set priorities.”

Barely anyone in the group is “only” a climate activist. They don’t only come to Mynttorget because of the climate or the environment, but “also” because of the climate. Most of them are here because something is not right about society, they say, because they have the feeling that school leaves the real questions aside and because they can no longer