Today, hundreds of thousands of students in more than 1,500 cities are walking out of school to send one urgent message to adults: It’s time to take climate change seriously.
The demonstrations have come to be known by a few different names — Fridays for Future, Youth for Climate, and Youth Strike 4 Climate — but they all stem from the same movement. Last summer, 16-year-old girl Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish Parliament in protest of the government’s inaction on climate change, which in turn inspired what has quickly become one of the most visible climate movements, Fridays for Future.
While teens and preteens have been staging similar strikes over the past few months, today’s demonstration is by far the largest, with kids around the world raising signs with impassioned pleas to world leaders, urging them to combat climate change. They want wholly renewable economies, no new fossil-fuel infrastructure, and in the U.S., the Green New Deal — and through this impressive show of collective action, they want adults to hear their demands, now.
“I’d be in school if the Earth were cool,” reads one sign in Athens. In Lisbon, eight people hold a banner saying “capitalismo não é verde,” which translates to “capitalism isn’t green.”
Below, here’s what the strike looks like around the world.
