Climate movement
[1] Climate activism has become increasingly prominent over time, gaining significant momentum during the 2009 Copenhagen Summit and particularly following the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2016.
[5] Youth activism and involvement has played an important part in the evolution of the movement after the growth of the Fridays For Future strikes started by Greta Thunberg in 2019.
[2] In 2019, Extinction Rebellion organized large protests demanding to "reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025, and create a citizens' assembly to oversee progress", including blocking roads.
[18] The third approach is to create space for discussions that move beyond questions of economic interests that often dominate political debates to emphasize ecological values and grass-roots democracy.
[19] Some politicians, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger with the slogan "terminate pollution", say that activists should generate optimism by focusing on the health co-benefits of climate action.
[26] It has been proposed that the national security sector could play a unique role in the development of a global climate-emergency mobilisation of labour and resources to build a zero-emission economy and enact decarbonization.
[27] Commentators and The Climate Mobilization have suggested mobilisation of resources on the scale of a war economy and other related exceptional or effective measures.
[42][43] Litigations are often carried out via collective pooling of effort and resources such as via organizations like Greenpeace,[44] which sued a Polish coal utility[44] and a German car manufacturer.
One of them is to pressure government across the globe to put legislation in place including carbon tax or banning any further drilling of fossil fuels.
These divestment commitments have resulted in reductions in the flow of capital into the gas and oil sector, as experienced in 33 countries across the globe between the years 2000 and 2015.
[65] Sustained hunger striking, although used in several social justice campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries, was (possibly) first[citation needed] employed as a climate tactic in Berlin, Germany in 2024 under the banner of Starve until you are honest.
[73] In order for emissions reduction, one of many climate change issues, to occur at a scale that has positive environmental effects government action will be needed.
[75] The progression of mobilization in some cases depends on activists to find ways to move past barriers found in these government systems.
"...[L]atent civic behavior, attitudes towards society, and historical patterns of expectations for institutional performance can exert surprisingly important influence on political, and even economic outcomes(pg.
[76] A 2023 review study published in One Earth stated that opinion polls show that most people perceive climate change as occurring now and close by.
There have been "signs of declining confidence and membership in environmental [organizations]"[80] in the BRIC countries as well as "barriers to public involvement and social [mobilization] due to close monitoring and censorship, notably in China and Russia.
[74] There are also many different goals and gaps between these types of movements, as well as barriers to producing an effective, influential message to inspire other to enact change.
[84] Unknown actors also secretly hired professional hackers to launch phishing hacking attacks against climate activists who were organizing the
Alice Reid, a spokesperson for the group Rebels in Prison Support, claims that many of these protestors are young adults with no connection to the judicial system before becoming activists.
[86] Since the late 2010s individual activists in Australia have been targeted by corporate strategic lawsuits against public participation and most states have increased penalties for business interference or trespassing as well as criminalised the use of specific devices used to attach protesters to infrastructure or equipment.
[90] Since 2014, growing portions of the climate movement, especially in the United States have been organizing for an international economic response to climate change on the scale of the mobilization of the American home front during World War II, with the goal of rapidly slashing carbon emissions and transitioning to 100% clean energy faster than the free market is likely to allow.
[92] In August 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben published an article in the New Republic rallying Americans to "declare war on climate change.
"[93] Fridays for Future (FFF), also known as the School Strike for Climate (Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet [ˈskûːlstrɛjk fœr klɪˈmɑ̌ːtɛt]), is an international movement of school students who skip Friday classes to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.
Youth climate action groups such as SustainUS, Fridays for Future, the Sunrise Movement, and Climate Cardinals have called on young people to hold leaders accountable, whether through attending conferences,[108] striking from school and pressuring politicians to listen to scientists,[109] or calling for greater green jobs and consolidating voting power.[110][111].
After Greta Thunberg started the youth movement "Strikes for Climate" by protesting outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018, she documented her journey on Twitter, where she built a network to promote her cause and call people to action.
When the pandemic hit, most school strikes movements around the world continued to be held, but moved more onto social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc), resulting in lower participation rates.
Social media provided an outlet for youth to share their concerns, generate knowledge, and be more politically active since they are not yet able to vote and face logistical limitations in face-to-face participation.
The strategy for younger activists is to situate themselves within a specific role to create a relevant identity to others and make connections with other people on the internet.
One of the main tasks of this group is to draft a Global Youth Position Statement to hand officials at the annual UNFCCC Conference of Parties.
"[147][148] In May 2024, the Summer of Heat on Wall Street began a series of civil disobedience actions in Tribeca, New York City, mainly at the Citibank World Headquarters plaza.
