School Strike for Climate: a Retrospective.

CULTURE / ENVIRONMENT / ISSUE 5

In 2019, over four million strikers globally took to the streets to demand climate action. It was a movement led and backed by schoolchildren, underpinned by anger that the adults in power were not taking climate change seriously. The movement found its footing in Aotearoa, and school strike groups formed in cities around the country. The needle seemed to be moving when the Ardern Labour government declared a “climate emergency” in 2020.  But six years on, the New Zealand climate strike movement has dwindled. Fewer protestors join each subsequent rally, the media largely ignores the strikes. What happened? How did such a promising youth movement begin to decline?

I was a school strike organiser in Ōtautahi from 2021-2023, through my senior high school years. Here, I lay out my reflections on what hobbled the movement—issues around strategy when combating a neoliberal Labour government, and the structure of the group that caused frequent activist turnover and an inability to build institutional knowledge and radicalise.

The movement being confined to high schoolers meant that people largely joined in Year 11 and left come Year 13, taking with them the lessons and skills they’d learnt. There’s a steep learning curve in protest organising—learning what kind of actions draw participation, how to keep people safe and engaged, and what is effective change-making strategy. All that knowledge walked away from SS4C annually as older activists joined university climate groups instead. 

This structural issue prevented a cohesive strategy of radicalisation forming. SS4C operated off an optimistic “if we speak, they’ll listen” model of activism, draw enough kids into the streets, they’ll tug the heartstrings of those in power towards climate action. When this movement started in Aotearoa, SS4C was targeting Jacinda Ardern, who spoke of the “politics of kindness”. Her government did listen to a limited degree, passing the Climate Emergency Act and Zero Carbon Act. But their actions fell massively short of science-based targets, and even of the conservative Paris Accord Agreement goals, and they compensated for this poorly with epithets about the “bravery of youth voices”.

When the far-right National coalition swept in, it caught SS4C off guard. Adults in power were no longer even going to pay lip service to climate action. This should have been a radicalising moment. When you aren’t listened to, it’s time to make yourself unignorable:  start conducting civil disobedience, staging sit-ins and occupations, blocking fossil fuel infrastructure, disrupting politicians everywhere they go. But the institutional wisdom wasn’t there. People in SS4C hadn’t been in the political game long enough to see that a new opponent called for modified tactics, and so they kept trying the same tactics, marching lawfully down the road every couple of months. 

Young strike attendees could see that this wasn’t achieving gains anymore, and so they demobilised, and numbers dwindled, making it even harder for actions to be scaled up.

To bring the fight that the climate crisis so desperately needs, young activists need to learn when tactics reach their limit, and when to escalate. There’s a fine balance to be struck between smothering youth initiative, and leaving young activists in the cold, but we have to find it. We need to build a movement that nurtures and up-skills young people, not leaves them to reinvent the protest wheel. We need seasoned activists to support youth protestors to radicalise and achieve the initial vision of SS4C, a powerful and unignorable voice for climate justice.