‘Imagine what we could do’— the school strikes for climate and reclaiming citizen empowerment

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that the School Strike for Climate movement, and with it the whole climate movement as well as other resistance mobilizations, is in danger of being immobilized by the logic of the spectacle, the coronavirus pandemic, and government lockdowns. It ranges over issues of political performance, media spectacle, climate inaction and the challenges of protest in the contemporary era of environmental collapse, hyperspeed media cycles, and the coronavirus pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• School strikes for climate
• climate activism
• protest
• spectacle

Acknowledgments

Many thanks for taking the time to comment deeply on early drafts of this essay to Kylie Cardell and Judy Powell, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful for the encouragement and collegiality of Elizabeth Stephens and Karin Sellberg during difficult times working at universities in crisis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The quote is from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/22/climate-strikes-continue-online-we-want-to-keep-the-momentum-going.

2. As laid out by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. See for example, On Television (The New Press, 1998).

3. Knaus (2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Angi Buettner

Angi Buettner works on environmental communication and political ecology. Her research focuses on the social, political, psychological and historical power of images in environmental and political debate. Angi is the author of Holocaust Images and Picturing Catastrophe: The Cultural Politics of Seeing (Routledge, 2016) and co-author of Understanding Media Studies (Oxford, 2010).