“[Whose future?—Our future!
Whose future?—Our future!]
This is about my future, about the future of us all, about the future of the next generation, and it pains me, that we are just going to leave the Earth behind like this, that we are polluting the planet so much, something must be done, and I also feel partly responsible for this, and that’s why I’m here.”

You just heard a young climate activist from Austria’s Fridays for Future movement. The interview is from a protest that took place on 1 February 2019 at Heldenplatz in Vienna. The House of Austrian History has collected the protest posters you see here from different demonstrations, including signs from the Fridays for Future movement.

As you can see, many of the colourful pieces of paper on the wall refer to the issue of climate change. They are all responses from visitors to the question “What is worth fighting for?”

In 2018, Greta Thunberg, a schoolgirl in Sweden, started protesting in front of the Swedish parliament for better climate protection. This “school strike for the climate” inspired many young people to do the same. Under the slogan “Fridays for Future”, more and more young people took to the streets.

Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees as laid out in the Paris Agreement is one of the main goals for “Fridays for Future Austria”.

The agreement was decided upon in 2015, after which most of the world’s countries gradually signed it. By doing so, they agreed to create measures to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—compared to pre-industrial levels. In practice, although some policies contribute to reaching this, hardly any country has an environmental policy that could attain this goal.

“There is no Planet B” is an important slogan for the young activists. At the start of this audio guide, we got a view on planet earth from outer space. Taking a look in the opposite direction, from planet Earth into outer space shows us that—with all that we know today—the Earth is an absolutely unique and astonishing planet. And its resources are limited.

Many have a mind-set that there is a limitless supply of energy. It is impossible to keep up our current energy use without fossil fuels, which have severely impacted climate change.

Many people push climate change to the back of their minds every single day. Some even deny that it is real. “Scientists for Future” across the globe support the young activists, and state: “Based on sound scientific evidence we can say that their concerns are justified and valid. The current measures taken to protect the climate, species, forests, oceans and soil are far from enough.” End quote.

The growth in prosperity since the 1970s, and the peace many countries experienced, came at a price, by borrowing from the future—which the young generation is now fighting for.


With an excerpt from:
Fridays for Future: Streik für das Klima in Wien, Video by DER STANDARD on youtube.