From ‘hippies’ to “How dare you!” and beyond..

In 1971 a group of environmental activists set sail from Canada to protest nuclear testing. With this journey the organization Greenpeace was born. 50 years old this year, Greenpeace and other organizations like it have seen environmental concerns move from the fringe to the mainstream, and eventually evolve into climate change activism. In 2009, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, more than forty thousand people marched for a Global Agreement on Climate Change. Spontaneous rallies and demonstrations demanding immediate climate action took place around the globe, increasing over the last decades. Beginning in 2018 ‘Fridays For Future’ are days where millions of school students boycott schools on Friday and participate in climate change activism. Civil disobedience movements like Extinction Rebellion and Ende Gelände have also started to gain significant attention and support. On September 23, 2019, world leaders in New York city witnessed possibly the most powerful speech in the last decade when Greta Thunberg declared that they have failed to address climate change.