Are You Ready to Climate-Strike With Fridays for Future This Friday?

Check out the youth org's new We Don't Care video campaign

By Katie O'Reilly

March 24, 2022

Four years after Greta Thunberg's 2018 solo sit-in outside Sweden’s parliament at age 15, the notion of kids shirking school for climate strikes has turned global. Much credit is due to Thunberg's campaign, Fridays for Future—which leads several awareness efforts but is still fundamentally based on turning Fridays into a day for young people to skip school and urge governments to counter global warming’s harmful effects. In 185 countries, an estimated 7.6 million people have attended Fridays for Future climate strikes.

In honor of its third annual global school strike, planned for tomorrow, the US Fridays for Future campaign has launched what it’s calling a We Don’t Care ad—a polished video featuring Gen Zers mocking familiar refrains of climate change denial. Never do phrases like "There are a lot of positives to global warming!" and "It's not only fake news; it's fake science!" sound more preposterous than when they're being spewed out of the mouths of stylish (and clearly sarcastic) young kids while they're skateboarding or shrugging apathetically. (A favorite moment is when one kid asks, "What's the big deal with ice melting? That's just more water for the fish.") The video concludes with a simple question: “If current generations don’t care about the future of our planet, who will?” The message is clear: It's high time to turn apathy into serious action.

It makes sense that the video stars members of Generation Z: 10- to 25-year-olds. Some 76 percent of this generation considers climate change among the biggest societal concerns, according to a 2021 Pew Research survey. And for good reason—a 2021 report estimates that today’s kids will live through three times as many climate change disasters as their grandparents.

While organized by and for youths, tomorrow's strike is open to anyone. How to participate? While many communities across the US have in-person rallies planned, climate activists are well aware that many more communities have banned large events and public gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19. Not to be deterred, Fridays for Future is taking their climate strikes to the cybersphere with the #ClimateStrikeOnline campaign. To show solidarity and join this campaign to keep up momentum and awareness for climate justice, simply take a photo or video of yourself with your favorite climate justice sign or message and post it online to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and anywhere else on Friday (and on any Friday). Tag your post with the hashtag #ClimateStrikeOnline and/or #DigitalStrike. (If you tag Fridays for Future on Instagram, they'll plant a tree for you as a thank-you.) We hope to see you “out” there.