An action week for the climate is now starting all over the country. There will be demonstrations, strikes and disobedience protests from about a hundred different organizations in about thirty locations. And new research shows that climate demonstrations can make us change our behavior.
Extinction rebellion has staged the troubled hour outside the Swedish National Agency for Education. Protesting Teachers, school staff and students believe that the authority must call on schools to teach about the causes of the climate crisis.
– The School Inspectorate, which then works for the Swedish National Agency for Education, has said that 27 out of 30 high schools that they examined do not have good enough sustainable development in their education, says Elmer Silver, who is in year one at the Minerva school in Umeå, but has come to Stockholm to protest.
Promotions in around 30 locations
Extinction Rebellion’s action is just one of the many demonstrations we will see in the coming week. About a hundred organizations will protest in about 30 locations in the country.
Researchers who have followed climate protests see a break in the trend in that the actions are taking on more and more expressions.
– We see, for example, civil disobedience becoming more and more common, to get attention for climate change and the absence of political will, says researcher Livia Fritz at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Changed behaviors
Among other things, she has conducted a survey in Switzerland which shows that almost a third of the Swiss have changed their climate-affecting habits after, among other things, Greta Thunberg’s and Fridays for futures protests.
– It is difficult to say whether it has any effect. You never know until afterwards, you have to look back on that. But I think it is extremely important that we join together many climate and environmental movements. We need to try lots of methods and ways. Hopefully we will get there in one of those ways, says Annelie Ängdervik, who is a teacher and one of the organizers behind the campaign.