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fridays for future
Fridays for Future Plans Global Climate Strike During COP30 in Brazil
"A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future," said a movement member in the host country.
Jul 29, 2025
The Fridays for Future movement announced this week that it is planning the next Global Climate Strike for November 14, the first Friday during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.
The movement began in 2018, with then-teenage Greta Thunberg's solo protest at the Swedish parliament, which inspired millions of people to hold similar school strikes for climate action around the world.
The U.N. summit, COP30, is set to run from November 10-21. Brazil's website for the conference states that "the main challenges include aligning the commitments of developed and developing countries in relation to climate finance, ensuring that emission reduction targets are compatible with climate science, and dealing with the socio-economic impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations."
On November 14, "under the banner #JustTransitionNow, young people around the world will mobilize to demand urgent, justice-centered action to phase out fossil fuels and build a sustainable future for all," according to a Monday statement from Fridays for Future.
"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists... It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis."
According to the movement, the upcoming global strike will highlight the urgent need to:
- Accelerate the phase-out of fossil fuels: End the financing and expansion of coal, oil, and gas projects.
- Massively invest in renewable energy: Call for a significant increase in clean, affordable energy for all.
- Ensure a just transition for workers and communities: Safeguard livelihoods and promote social justice in the shift to a green economy.
- Advance climate justice for the Global South: Demand reparations and financial support for developing countries disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.
"Global leaders must stop listening to fossil fuel lobbyists or seeking alliances with groups like OPEC+," said Daniel Holanda of Fridays for Future Brazil, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading oil exporters.
"It's time they start listening to science, to young people, and to traditional communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis," Holanda added. "A just transition is not a luxury or a campaign to be used for greenwashing; it's a matter of survival and securing our future."
The movement's announcement of the next strike follows last week's landmark advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—the U.N.'s primary judicial organ—that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action against the "urgent and existential threat" of human-caused planetary heating.
"We now have a common foundation based on the rule of law, releasing us from the limitations of individual nations' political interests that have dominated climate action," said Ralph Regenvanu, a minister in Vanuatu, which introduced the U.N. General Assembly resolution that led to the opinion. "This moment will drive stronger action and accountability to protect our planet and peoples."
Plans for the strike also come as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and congressional Republicans work to undo the limited progress that the United States has made in terms of taking accountability for being the biggest historical contributor to climate pollution.
In addition to the United States ditching the Paris agreement, again, Trump's return to power has meant the elimination of the State Department's Office of Global Change. The latter move, CNN reported Tuesday, "leaves the world's largest historical polluter with no official presence" at COP30.
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'Back With a Bang': Climate Marches Kick Off Worldwide as Global South Seeks Reparations
"It is unconscionable that Global North governments have continuously rejected their responsibility to deliver adequate climate finance for the Global South."
Sep 20, 2024
Climate protesters across the world hit the streets on Friday to kick off this year's Global Climate Strike ahead of the opening of high-level United Nations General Assembly meetings next week, where climate finance for the Global South is on the agenda.
Protests for climate justice were planned across 50 countries, with Germany alone seeing more than 100 rallies that together drew some 75,000 people. The protests were spearheaded by the youth-led group Fridays for Future (FFF), started by Greta Thunberg in 2018. The New York chapter of the group marched across the Brooklyn Bridge Friday afternoon aiming to "tear down the pillars of the fossil fuel industry."
One of the main climate items on the international agenda this year regards financing for Global South countries that are disproportionately impacted by climate breakdown. The Climate Action Network International on Friday called for Global North countries—which are responsible for the vast majority of historical emissions—to pay $5 trillion per year to Global South countries in climate reparations.
"It is unconscionable that Global North governments have continuously rejected their responsibility to deliver adequate climate finance for the Global South," Lidy Nacpil, the Philippines-based coordinator of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development, said in a statement.
"If developed nations are serious about solving the problem of climate change, as they claim to be, they should agree to a climate finance target that covers the costs of mitigation, adaptation, just transition, and loss and damage," she added. "The Global South is owed trillions—not billions."
Today in Berlin! This is big. It’s not easy being a climate activist these days yet hope is all around. #climatestrike #nowforfuture pic.twitter.com/A9jze0yts7
— Luisa Neubauer (@Luisamneubauer) September 20, 2024
The UNGA meetings will set the stage for negotiations at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in November.
Advocates criticized rich countries for their unwillingness to provide meaningful levels of finance to the Global South following preliminary talks in Bonn, Germany in June.
A study published in Nature last year found that even if all countries decarbonize by 2050, Global North countries would by that time collectively owe Global South countries $192 trillion in climate reparations. This analysis is the basis for the $5 trillion annual payout sought by campaigners.
The New York marchers on Friday chanted climate protest favorites such as "What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now" and "The people, united, will never be defeated" as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. They carried banners with messages such as "Tear Down Fossil Fuels" and "We Strike for the Future."
The most specific demand issued by the New York protesters on Friday was for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would require polluting companies in the state to pay into a fund that could be used for extreme weather resiliency and preparation projects. The state Legislature has already passed the bill, and it awaits only the governor's signature. Democrats have also proposed a similar measure at the federal level.
There's some diversity in the political makeup of the global FFF protests, which, even just in New York, include people from a wide array of organizations. The German chapter has distanced itself from comments Thunberg made about Israel's war on Gaza, which she called a genocide. She was arrested at a pro-Palestine rally in Stockholm earlier this month.
FFF Germany did take a swipe at the far-right, which has been ascendant in the country in recent years, running on an anti-immigrant platform, and the national government, led by the center-left Social Democratic Party.
"The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of our time, not right-wing debates about migration," the group wrote on social media on Friday. "If the climate targets were a border, the government would have closed it long ago. We remain loud for climate protection!"
FFF and other climate activist groups have not been able to sustain the numbers they reached in 2019, when coordinated strikes across the world reached record numbers.
Though Friday's actions were smaller, they gave hope to movement veterans. Writer and climate organizer Bill McKibben, remarking on the large number of protesters in Germany, wrote on social media that school strikes were "back with a bang."
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'You Cannot In Fact Do Both': Biden Slammed for Bragging About Oil Production
"No you cannot 'do both.' That would be like sending 50,000 tons of lethal weapons to a brutal, murderous regime and then telling them you 'want a cease-fire,'" said Climate Defiance.
Sep 03, 2024
Climate campaigners this week rebuked recent claims by U.S. President Joe Biden—and Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee—that the United States can simultaneously increase fossil fuel production and transition to a clean energy future.
On Saturday, Biden
boasted on social media that "on my watch, we've responsibly increased our oil production to meet our immediate needs—without delaying or deferring our transition to clean energy."
"We're America," the president added. "We can do both."
In a simultaneous swipe at the Biden administration's climate record and support for Israel's annihilation of Gaza, the direct action group Climate Defiance
retorted: "No you cannot 'do both.' That would be like sending 50,000 tons of lethal weapons to a brutal, murderous regime and then telling them you 'want a cease-fire.'"
Other climate groups and experts have also challenged Biden's position in recent days.
Climate scientist Peter Kalmus
said on social media, "This is horrifying."
Fridays for Future USA
contended, "You cannot in fact do both."
"You can't expand fossil fuels on Monday, expand renewables on Tuesday, and call it climate action on Wednesday," the youth-led movement added. "Do better."
Noting that Harris has also claimed that "we can do both," author and professor Genevieve Guenther
asserted: "'We can do both' is apparently the climate and energy messaging on which the Harris campaign has settled. (Harris used the identical phrase in her CNN interview.) I understand it as a message that meets the moment. But it's not true, and I hope they don't believe it."
Despite lofty rhetoric and campaign pledges to center climate action—including by stopping new fossil fuel drilling on public lands—Biden
oversaw the approval of more new permits for drilling on public land during his first two years in office than former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee, did in 2017 and 2018.
The Biden administration has also
held fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and has approved the highly controversial Willow project, Mountain Valley Pipeline, and increased liquefied natural gas production and export before pausing LNG exports earlier this year.
Despite the pause—which campaigners are
urging the Biden administration to make permanent—the president has also overseen what climate defenders have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than the European Union's combined greenhouse gas footprint.
Biden also
drew ridicule last year after he said he has "practically" declared a climate emergency—a longtime demand of activists. The president's claim came during a speech touting the clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocates hundreds of billions of dollars for climate-mitigating investments but also includes policies that anger green groups.
Climate campaigners widely agree that a Harris administration would be far preferable to one led by the climate science-denying Trump, one of whose mottos is "Drill, Baby, Drill." During his first term, Trump rolled back numerous climate-focused regulations and aggressively expanded U.S. fossil fuel production. Biden has reversed some of Trump's most impactful attacks on climate and environmental protections.
In April, Trump
reportedly told fossil fuel executives that a $1 billion investment in his campaign would be a great deal for them due to all the taxes and regulations they would avoid under his administration.
Meanwhile, Harris is widely expected to continue many of Biden's climate and energy policies, including embracing fracked methane gas, which she once said she wanted to ban.
In another "we can do both" moment, Harris told CNN last week that "what I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking."
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The Climate Youth Movement’s Earth Day Message to Biden
We call on the president to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency that takes meaningful action to end the era of fossil fuels and invest in environmental justice.
Apr 26, 2024
Last weekend, we flooded our streets and campuses with our voices and votes. Tens of thousands of young people along with the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future U.S., and Reclaim Earth Day, in more than 200 actions nationwide, are demanding bold action because billions of lives are under threat, and we need our leaders to act like it.
We call on President Joe Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency that takes meaningful action to end the era of fossil fuels and invest in environmental justice. Bold climate action is long overdue, and we are running out of time. Every moment our president wastes, every new fossil fuel project he approves, magnifies the environmental and social disasters the world is already facing. The climate crisis exacerbates all other crises—it’s the most pressing of our time.
The U.S. is burning on the West Coast, flooding on the East Coast, and baking in the South. Yet oil and gas production has surged to record highs under Biden. We now produce more fossil fuels than any other country in the world. Just this month, Biden has approved dozens of new oil and gas projects that lock us into 30 more years of oil and gas, and will poison the air and water of communities living near the projects. From the petrochemical corridor “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana to neighborhood drilling in Los Angeles to flooded Miami, frontline communities are bearing the brunt of fossil fuel pollution and the climate crisis. Despite communities’ groundbreaking activism, fossil fuel companies and puppet politicians are doing everything in their power to keep us hooked on oil.
If Biden wants to win this November, he must deliver for young people.
But we’re not falling for it. We know that renewables are the cheapest source of electricity on the market and that fossil fuels must be phased out. When our institutions have been corrupted by oil influence, we need direct action from the highest level: a Climate Emergency Declaration. The time has passed for incremental action.
Last weekend, thousands of young people in three national days of action called on President Biden to use his executive powers to act decisively. On Friday, April 19, thousands of high school students walked out of their classes and onto the streets as a part of the Fridays For Future global day of action; over the weekend, Sunrise Movement activists held teach-ins at congressional offices across the country; and on April 22, college students at over 100 institutions rallied across campuses to Reclaim Earth Day. Across more than 200 different cities and campuses, thousands of students and young voters made their voices heard.
Hundreds of young people walked out of classes at their march declaring a climate emergency and calling for the university to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry. (Photo: Sunrise Princeton University)
We’re turning up the pressure because it’s time that President Biden stop approving fossil fuel projects and take action to protect our communities and our futures. By declaring a climate emergency using the National Emergencies Act (NEA), Biden would unlock critical authorities to phase out fossil fuels and protect our communities from the climate crisis—including the ability to reinstate a crude oil export ban and stop investments in fossil fuel projects abroad. He could use the Public Health Services Act to ensure that everyone has access to affordable healthcare and safe housing after climate disasters strike for the people most impacted by the fossil fuel industry. He could create millions of good-paying green union jobs building resilient and distributed renewable energy across the country. He can and he must take these actions. Millions of lives are on the line.
From coast to coast, we took action to demand Biden change track; our generation is leading the way. In 2021, millions of young people signed a petition to stop Biden’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ devastating Willow pipeline. In September 2023, 75,000 people, youth, along with faith, frontline, and labor leaders, took to the streets and demanded an end to fossil fuels. Last October, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), a union 1.72 million strong, passed a resolution demanding Biden declare a climate emergency, and this spring, hundreds of thousands of us in Michigan, Wisconsin, and beyond voted “Uncommitted” in our call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and an end to unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel.
Now, the weekend before Earth Day, we took action in the thousands from New York to Los Angeles, from college campuses to city centers, with one message: If Biden wants to win this November, he must deliver for young people.
Over a hundred young voters joined a march in Kansas City over the weekend, calling on President Biden to declare a climate emergency and for climate justice. (Photo: Sunrise Kansas City)
When he ran as a climate president in 2020, Biden won the youth vote by 20 points. But, as president, Biden has thrown youth and frontline communities under the bus with his continued fossil fuel approvals. Now, polls show Biden neck and neck with former President Donald Trump for the youth vote. The majority of Americans want Biden to both do more on climate and the crisis in Gaza.
We understand the severity of this political moment. Biden is going up against Trump and an extreme right-wing party that has the opposite of a climate or human rights agenda and no respect for democracy. We are pushing Biden because millions of lives are on the line, because activism is exactly what a healthy democracy demands, and because we hope that by listening to us Biden can use his time left in office to restore faith in our political system and reinvigorate young people to vote for him in the historical numbers we need. In the 2024 election, 41 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote. Simply put, Biden will not win without young people.
Going into 2024, young people are calling for Biden to invest in future generations and recognize the need for immediate action to combat the intersecting crises of our time. He must prove to our generation that he is fighting for us.
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Youth Lead Global Strike Demanding 'Climate Justice Now'
"We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don't care about our future and aren't doing anything to stop the climate crisis," one young activist said.
Apr 19, 2024
Ahead of Earth Day, young people around the world are participating in a global strike on Friday to demand "climate justice now."
In Sweden, Greta Thunberg joined hundreds of other demonstrators for a march in Stockholm; in Kenya, participants demanded that their government join the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in the U.S., youth activists are kicking off more than 200 Earth Day protests directed at pressing President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency.
"We're gathered here to fight, once again, for climate justice," Thunberg told Agence France-Presse at the Stockholm protest, which drew around 500 people. "It's now been more than five and a half years that we've been doing the same thing, organizing big global strikes for the climate and gathering people, youths from the entire world."
"I lost my home to climate change. Now I'm fighting so that others don't lose their homes."
The first global youth climate strike, which grew out of Thunberg's Fridays for Future school strikes, took place on March 15, 2019. Since then, both emissions and temperatures have continued to rise, with 2023 blowing past the record for hottest year. Yet, according to Climate Action Tracker, no country has policies in place that are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
"We are many people and youths who want to express our frustration over what decision-makers are doing right now: They don't care about our future and aren't doing anything to stop the climate crisis," Karla Alfaro Gripe, an 18-year-old participant at the Stockholm march, told AFP.
The global strikes are taking place under the umbrella of Friday's for Future, which has three main demands: 1. limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, 2. ensure climate justice and equity, and 3. listen to the most accurate, up-to-date science."Fight with us for a world worth living in," the group wrote on their website, next to a link inviting visitors to find actions in their countries.
Participants shared videos and images of their actions on social media.
European strikers also gathered in London, Dublin, and Madrid.
In Asia, Save Future Bangladesh founder Nayon Sorkar posted a video from the Meghna River on Bangladesh's Bola Island, where erosion destroyed his family's home when he was three years old.
"I lost my home to climate change," Sorkar wrote. "Now I'm fighting so that others don't lose their homes."
Also in Bangladesh, larger crowds rallied in Dhaka, Sylhet, Feni, and Bandarban for climate action.
"Young climate activists in Bandarban demand a shift to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels," said Sajjad Hossain, the divisional coordinator for Youthnet for Climate Justice Bangladesh. "We voiced urgency for sustainable energy strategies and climate justice. Let's hold governments accountable for a just transition!"
In Kenya, young people struck specifically to demand that the government sign on to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"As a member of the Lake Victoria community, the importance of the treaty in our climate strikes cannot be overstated," Rahmina Paullette, founder of Kisumu Environmental Champions and a coordinator for Fridays for Future Africa, said in a statement. "By advocating for its implementation, we address the triple threat of climate change, plastic pollution, and environmental injustice facing our nation."
"Halting fossil fuel expansion not only safeguards crucial ecosystems but also combats the unjust impacts of environmental degradation, ensuring a more equitable and sustainable future for our community and the wider Kenyan society," Paullette said.
In the U.S., Fridays for Future NYC planned for what they expected to be the largest New York City climate protest since September 2023's March to End Fossil Fuels. The action will begin at Foley Square at 2:00 pm Eastern Time, at which point more than 1,000 students and organizers are expected to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to rally in front of Borough Hall.
The strike "is part of a national escalation of youth-led actions in more than 200 cities and college campuses around the country, all calling on President Biden to listen to our generation and young voters, stop expanding fossil fuels, and declare a climate emergency that meaningfully addresses fossil fuels, creating millions of good paying union jobs, and preparing us for climate disasters in the process," Fridays for Future NYC said in a statement.
The coalition behind the climate emergency drive, which also includes the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future USA, and Campus Climate Network, got encouraging news on Wednesday when Bloomberg reported that the White House had reopened internal discussions into potentially declaring a climate emergency.
"We're staring down another summer of floods, fires, hurricanes, and extreme heat," Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in a statement. "Biden must do what right Republicans in Congress are unwilling to do: Stand up to oil and gas CEOs, create green union jobs, and prepare us for climate disasters. Biden must declare a climate emergency and use every tool at his disposal to tackle the climate crisis and prepare our communities to weather the storm. If Biden wants to be taken seriously by young people, he needs to deliver on climate change."
The coalition is planning events leading up to Monday including dozens of Earth Day teach-ins beginning Friday to encourage members of Congress to pressure Biden on a climate emergency and Reclaim Earth Day mobilizations on more than 100 college and university campuses to demand that schools divest from and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry.
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Youth Coalition Presses Biden to Declare Climate Emergency Ahead of Earth Day
"As the election approaches, young people are mobilizing to demand President Biden take bold action to protect young peoples' futures."
Apr 11, 2024
Ahead of Earth Day on April 22, youth organizers across the United States are planning protests in hundreds of communities to demand that President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and take other action to tackle the fossil fuel-driven crisis.
"President Biden promised to be a climate president. Ahead of the 2024 election, young people are mobilizing to hold him accountable to that promise," reads a joint statement put out by the coalition composed of Campus Climate Network, Fridays for Future USA, and the Sunrise Movement.
While they are focused on the president in power, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump—a Big Oil ally whose plans for the planet if he returns to office are to "drill, baby, drill"—offers no hope for the groups' demands.
Biden has won praise for some climate progress during his first term, particularly his recent pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. However, the Democrat has also come under fire for supporting the Willow oil project and Mountain Valley Pipeline, continuing fossil fuel lease sales, and skipping last year's United Nations summit.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration approved the construction of Houston-based Enterprise Product Partners' Sea Port Oil Terminal off the Texas Gulf Coast.
Sunrise called the move "very disappointing," and pointed out on social media that the project is set to "be the largest oil export terminal in the U.S."
"It threatens lives, just so Big Oil can profit big exporting abroad," the movement added. "This is a dangerous mark of Big Oil's power in politics."
Despite marks of progress on climate, the groups lamented that "U.S. oil and gas production has surged to record highs" under the Biden administration.
They also acknowledged previous protests, including one by Sunrise in February that led to arrests at Biden's campaign headquarters.
"As the election approaches, young people are mobilizing to demand President Biden take bold action to protect young peoples' futures," they said. "That begins with declaring a climate emergency that meaningfully addresses fossil fuels, creates millions of good-paying union jobs, and helps us prepare for incessant climate disasters."
Last year—the hottest in human history—Biden claimed that "practically speaking," he had already declared a national climate emergency. The People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition responded that he "should follow through on his rhetoric and immediately declare a national emergency that would unlock new executive powers to speed up the deployment of clean energy and halt fossil fuel expansion."
As the Center for Biological Diversity has laid out, if Biden declared an emergency, under various federal laws he could then halt crude oil exports; stop oil and gas drilling in the outer continental shelf; restrict international trade and private investment in fossil fuels; grow domestic manufacturing for clean energy and transportation to speed the nationwide transition off fossil fuels; and build resilient and distributed renewable energy systems in climate-vulnerable communities.
To renew pressure on the president, Fridays for Future USA is planning a Day of Climate Action—part of a global strike next Friday, April 19. Organizers said that "in New York City alone, thousands of students will walk out of their classes and march from Foley Square in Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn Borough Hall."
On Earth Day itself—April 22—Campus Climate Network is organizing actions at over 100 campuses calling on colleges and universities to "become true environmental justice leaders and cut ties with the fossil fuel industry."
Meanwhile, the Sunrise Movement plans to lead dozens of Earth Day teach-ins at congressional offices and other locations to urge members of Congress to demand a formal declaration.
Sunrise is also part of another coalition—with Gen-Z for Change, March for Our Lives, and United We Dream Action—that is pushing the president to embrace a broader youth agenda that addresses not only the climate emergency but also gun violence, immigrants' rights, and the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
"In 2020, young people sent Biden to the White House. In 2024, how many young people turn out for Biden will determine if we stave off a second Trump presidency," the group's political director, Michele Weindling, said last month. "Right now, young people are shouting for what we need from Biden to mobilize our generation this November."
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'Climate Protesters Are Not the Criminals': Case Against Greta Thunberg Thrown Out
"The actual crime is committed by the very industries and companies we are acting against," said Thunberg, one of five activists charged after protesting a fossil fuel industry summit in London.
Feb 02, 2024
A British judge on Friday tossed a case against Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and four other activists accused of not complying with police orders under an anti-protest law while peacefully demonstrating last year at a fossil fuel industry summit in the U.K. capital.
Thunberg along with Peter Barker and Jeff Rice of Greenpeace, and Fossil Free London's Christofer Kebbon and Joshua James Unwin were among over two dozen arrested at a protest against the Energy Intelligence Forum in October. The five were charged with "failing to comply with a condition imposed under Section 14 of the Public Order Act" and faced a two-day trial at the Westminster Magistrates' Court this week.
"Judge John Laws threw out a public order charge due to 'no evidence,'" the BBC reported. "The judge said that the conditions imposed on protesters were 'so unclear that it is unlawful.' He added that it meant that 'anyone failing to comply were actually committing no offense.'"
Welcoming the development, Greenpeace U.K. declared on social media, "This is a VICTORY for the right to protest!"
"It is ridiculous that more and more climate activists are finding themselves in court for peacefully exercising their right to protest, while fossil fuel giants like Shell are allowed to reap billions in profits from selling climate-wrecking fossil fuels," the group said.
"Thankfully the judge has today recognized that brave activists should not be in court," Greenpeace continued. "But let's be clear: It's the fossil fuel CEOs who should be in the dock moving forwards!"
Fossil Free London also celebrated the win, saying: "This is a rare glimmer of justice, in a rising sea of repression. Climate protest is not a crime but it is still treated as such. We resist!"
Ahead of the decision, Thunberg—who at age 15 began solitary school strikes for the climate that grew into the global Fridays for Future movement—noted on social media that she wouldn't be striking this Friday due to the trial. However, the 21-year-old still took aim at fossil fuel companies that she and the other activists were protesting last fall.
"These companies are destabilizing the biosphere and climate, the life-supporting systems we all depend on to survive," she said. "They have displaced and destroyed countless people's lives and livelihoods. We don't have the laws to keep the carbon in the ground and ensure safe lives for present and future generations."
Thunberg stressed that "even though we are the ones standing here, and climate-, environmental- and human rights activists all over the world are being targeted for their activism, prosecuted, sometimes convicted and given legal penalties for acting in line with science, we must remember who the real enemy is."
"The actual crime is committed by the very industries and companies we are acting against," she added. "We have the truth on our side, and we have morality on our side. In time, this will be revealed."
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AI-Aged Youth Warn of Climate Perils From 2050
"World leaders are not listening to the younger generation, so what if we turn young climate advocates into older versions of themselves—into their future voices?"
Nov 30, 2023
With help from generative artificial intelligence, We Don't Have Time turned over a dozen young climate campaigners into future versions of themselves to stress to world leaders the necessity of bolder action to tackle the climate emergency.
We Don't Have Time, the world's largest social network for climate solutions, launched the "Future Voices" initiative on Thursday, as the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) began in the United Arab Emirates and scientists warned that after months of devastating heat and extreme weather events, 2023 is "virtually certain" to be the warmest year on record.
"World leaders are not listening to the younger generation, so what if we turn young climate advocates into older versions of themselves—into their future voices?" said David Olsson of We Don't Have Time. "Then the demand for ending fossils and accelerating solutions can't be ignored. We encourage everyone to support this message."
The Future Voices website highlights that current children and young adults will suffer the consequences of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency "to a much higher degree than previous generations," and already, youth worldwide are enduring the impacts of heating the planet and reporting that the crisis is taking a toll on their mental health.
The website features an interactive globe through which users can view video testimonies from campaigners around the world (also included below). One of them stars Swedish Fridays for Future and Climate Live campaigner Andreas Magnusson, who said in a statement that "in the fight against the climate crisis, including and listening to young people is crucial."
Speaking from Sweden in 2050, the AI-aged Magnusson says in his video that "in my hometown, Mockfjärd, I've seen landslide after landslide hit, caused by the heavy raining. And yet, I am not the one who suffers most. I come from a great place of privilege. I come from a part of the world that is not affected by nature's fury like other parts of the world are."
Activists from other parts of the world, in their own video messages from 2050, speak of "vast droughts causing water shortage," more frequent hurricanes, rising sea levels, and "floods and plagues."
Near the end of Magnusson's video, the 2023 version of him warns: "Time is running out. The choices world leaders make today will determine the kind of world we will live in tomorrow. The future is now."
In addition to the AI videos, the Future Voices initiative includes an online hub to help young activists who can't make it to Dubai still participate in COP28. Organizers are planning daily broadcasts with climate leaders and decision-makers.
"We are very proud and happy to be able to offer this opportunity for young people to get access to the most important climate negotiations of the year and deliver their messages to world leaders," said Olsson. "It would not have been possible without our incredible community of youth climate advocates."
Magnusson said that "Future Voices and the youth hub make the discussions at COP28 more inclusive."
"World leaders hold not only our future in their hands, they also hold our present, because we are already today affected by the climate crisis," the campaigner added. "And, frankly, it is youth who most of the time bring bold ideas and the unfiltered truth to the discussions about the future of humanity. Discussions that for 30 years haven't been able to even mention 'oil' in their agreements."
Watch more of the Future Voices videos below:
Nikka Gerona of the Philippines is co-chair of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Regional Young People's Action Team in East Asia and the Pacific.
Isaias Hernandez of the United States is an environmental justice educator and public speaker who created QueerBrownVegan.
Valeria Horton of Mexico founded Green Reconnection and was the Mexican lead negotiator for loss and damage at COP27.
Sophia Mathur of Canada is a climate advocate with Fridays for Future and recipient of the 2021 Action for Nature International Award.
Agustín Ocaña of Ecuador is the founder and chairperson of the Global Youth Coalition.
Anita Soina of Kenya is a climate advocate, politician, and global youth champion for the U.N.-hosted partnership Sanitation and Water for All.
Other featured activists include Farzana Faruk Jhumu of Bangladesh, an advocate with Fridays for Future and Feminist Action Coalition for Climate Justice; Denzel James of Australia, a UNICEF young ambassador; and Madina Kimaro of Tanzania, a UNICEF youth advocate and climate advocacy champion for the Tanzania Girl Guides Association.
There are also videos from Emma Kroese of the Netherlands, a climate advocate with Fridays for Future; Ashley Lashley of Barbados, a UNICEF youth advocate and CARICOM youth ambassador; Geoffrey Mboya of Kenya, a humanitarian, sustainability advocate, and youth adviser of the WeDontHaveTime Foundation; and Joaquín Salinas Atenas of Chile, a socioenvironmental artivist and UNICEF COP26 youth delegate.
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114 Climate Defenders Arrested While Blocking Entry to NY Federal Reserve
The activist group Climate Defiance asked: "Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their 'civility' and their 'moderation'?"
Sep 18, 2023
A day after tens of thousands of climate activists marched through Manhattan's Upper East Side demanding an end to oil, gas, and coal production, thousands more demonstrators hit the streets of Lower Manhattan Monday, where more than 100 people were arrested while surrounding the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to protest fossil fuel financing.
Protesters chanted slogans like "No oil, no gas, fossil fuels can kiss my ass" and "We need clean air, not another billionaire" as they marched from Zuccotti Park—ground zero of the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement—to pre-selected sites in the Financial District. Witnesses said many of the activists attempted to reach the New York Stock Exchange but were blocked by police.
"We're here to wake up the regulators who are asleep at the wheel as they continue to let Wall Street lead us into ANOTHER financial crash with their fossil fuel financing," the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition explained on social media.
Local and national media reported New York Police Department (NYPD) officers arrested 114 protesters and charged them with civil disobedience Monday after they blocked entrances to the Fed building. Most of those arrested were expected to be booked and released.
"I'm being arrested for exercising my First Amendment right to protest because Joe Manchin is putting a 300-mile-long pipeline through my home state of West Virginia and President [Joe] Biden allowed him to do it for nothing in return," explained Climate Defiance organizer Rylee Haught on social media, referring to the right-wing Democratic senator and the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
As she was led away by an NYPD officer, a tearful Haught said Biden "sold us out."
"He promised to end drilling on federal lands, and he's selling out Appalachia's future for profit," she added.
Responding to the "block-long" line of arrestees, Climate Defiance asked: "Why are we getting handcuffed while people who literally torch the planet get celebrated for their 'civility' and their 'moderation'?"
Alicé Nascimento of New York Communities for Change told WABC that the protests—which are part of Climate Week and are timed to coincide with this week's United Nations Climate Ambition Summit—are "our last resort."
"We're bringing the crisis to their doorstep and this is what it looks like," said Nascimento.
As they have at similar demonstrations, protesters called on Biden to stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. Some had a message for the president and his administration.
"We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election," 17-year-old Brooklynite Emma Buretta of the youth-led protest group Fridays for Future told WABC. "If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands, end fossil fuels."
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Advocates Launch Campaign Featuring Children Who Didn't Survive Climate Chaos
"Premature deaths due to fossil fuel-related air pollution are silencing young voices."
Sep 13, 2023
To drive home the point that premature deaths from fossil fuel pollution and the climate disasters it causes—including those of children—are not "a distant, abstract concept but a pressing reality," two advocacy groups on Tuesday launched a campaign featuring the faces of kids who did not survive the climate crisis.
Fridays for Future U.S. and Youth Climate Strike L.A. generated the images using artificial intelligence with the help of creative agency Fred & Farid—but the campaign, titled "Silenced," emphasizes that the children in the pictures represent the hundreds of thousands of children who die each year from pollution and extreme weather events such as flooding and drought.
The six images produced for the campaign show children looking directly at the viewer, with the word "SILENCED" over their faces and a caption that reads, "This young person will not raise their voice against climate change because they died from climate change."
"Premature deaths due to fossil fuel-related air pollution are silencing young voices," said Fridays for Future U.S. on social media.
A United Nations Human Rights Special Procedures report found last year that globally, an estimated 150,000 premature deaths per year have been linked to climate change, while the American Thoracic Society has estimated that around 1,341 people die in Los Angeles each year due to poor air quality driven by pollution such as carbon and methane emissions from fossil fuel extraction.
UNICEF, the U.N.'s children's agency, determined in 2021 that approximately 1 billion children worldwide are at "extremely high risk" of being exposed to potentially deadly environmental and climate shocks.
Calling the climate crisis "a child's rights crisis," UNICEF said that 240 million children are "highly exposed" to flooding in coastal areas, 400 million are exposed to cyclones and hurricanes, 820 million are exposed to extreme heat, and 1 billion are exposed to "exceedingly high levels of air pollution."
The World Health Organization also revealed in 2017 that more than 1 in 4 deaths of children under the age of five are attributable to "unhealthy environments" including those that expose children to air pollution.
The children featured in "Silenced" either "could have been alive today but unfortunately passed away early or were not born at all due to the harmful effects of air pollution, particularly caused by fossil fuel emissions," said Fridays for Future U.S.
"We believe that 'Silenced' is a powerful reminder of the real human cost of climate change," said Katharina Maier, the group's national coordinator. "We're facing more and more destructive impacts from fossil fuel pollution, contaminating our water and air, and sickening our communities—with low wealth and communities of color hit first and worst."
"We need an immediate and just transition from fossil fuels. This campaign is a call to action for all of us to stand up against the fossil fuel industry and work towards a cleaner, more sustainable future," Maier added.
The campaign was launched ahead of a global climate strike planned for September 15-17, which is taking place just before world leaders convene in New York at the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit to present updated climate action and emissions reduction targets.
The climate actions of wealthy countries such as the U.S. have left advocates continuing to demand that President Joe Biden declare a climate emergency and end fossil fuel drilling on public lands, as the Biden administration this year approved the Willow drilling project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia.
"Join us on September 15th and 17th for the global climate strike as we demand an end to the era of fossil fuels," said Maier. "We are the heroes we've been waiting for."
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