“Much has changed”
Greta Thunberg announces the end of her school strikes
06/09/2023, 2:11 p.m
Five years ago, Greta Thunberg skipped school for the first time to protest in Stockholm for more climate protection. The Swede’s action is the starting signal for the Fridays for Future movement. Thunberg is now ending her school strikes. But she wants to continue fighting for the climate.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has finished school, which also has an impact on her “school strike for the climate” that has been going on for almost five years. “Today I’m graduating from school, which means I can no longer go on a school strike for the climate,” the 20-year-old Swede tweeted. “That will be the last school strike for me.” But she will continue to protest on Fridays – it’s just not an actual “school strike” anymore. “We simply have no choice but to do whatever we can. The fight has only just begun.”
Thunberg sat alone in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm in August 2018 to demand more climate protection from the politicians in her country. From the lonely protest of the then only 15-year-old girl, the international climate protection movement Fridays for Future developed within a very short time. As a result, people in dozens of countries took to the streets for more climate protection, and schoolchildren mostly skipped school on Fridays to take part in demonstrations. There were also particularly large climate protests in Germany.
“When I started striking in 2018, I never expected it to lead to anything,” Thunberg said. Suddenly, their protest turned into a global movement that was growing every day. In 2019, millions of children and young people in over 180 countries went to demonstrations instead of to school. Then you had to find new forms of protest in the corona pandemic, but over time you went back to the streets.
“A lot has changed since we started and we still have a lot to go on,” wrote Thunberg. The world is still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalized and climate-affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth.