The first climate strikes had an influence on Swiss residents

A study by researchers found that Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future climate strikes have influenced the environmental behavior of Swiss residents. Climate activist Greta Thunberg made the headlines in September 2019 with her Fridays for Future climate strikes, in which some 4 million students in 150 countries protested to demand action on climate change. Frustrated with the slow pace of political leaders’ response to global warming, these students carried out peaceful protests to express their anger and call attention to the steady increase in greenhouse gas emissions. So far, most of the press coverage and research on Fridays for Future have focused on figures involved in the movement, while few studies have examined how the movement affected society at large. Livia Fritz, an EPFL researcher studying the social and political aspects of climate change, decided to investigate the societal impact of Fridays for Future through a study carried out with colleagues at the Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) in EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). Their findings appear in Sustainability Science . We wanted to see if the Friday for Future movement resulted in concrete changes in Swiss residents' behavior.