The global action is called Climatestrike and includes protests in the United States and 80 other countries, from every continent except Antarctica. According to 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor, the co-leader of the U.S. protest event, 400 strikes will occur in the U.S. alone.

Climatestrike is part of a global youth environmental movement that has seen a rapid upturn in the last two years thanks to the efforts of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg. On Aug. 20, 2018, Thunberg went not to school but to Parliament in Stockholm to protest. She had a woden sign and some flyers, containing facts about carbon footprint and climate change. She spent what would have been her schoolday hours in front of Parliament, holding up the sign and handing out flyers. She went back the next day and found other people ready to stand with her. Every school from then until Sept. 9–the day of her country's general elections–Thunberg spent outside Parliament, holding her own vigil; the crowds with her grew and grew. She wanted to call attention to the fact that her country's environmental policies were not necessarily in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement on actions needed to combat climate change.

Thunberg has gained worldwide recognition for herself and for her cause. She has her own TED talk, she has appeared on countless interview shows, and she addressed world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos and at the U.N. Climate Conference COP 24.

She now attends school four days and week and then, on Friday, assumes her protesting post. She has started a worldwide movement called Fridaysforfuture. The target date for Climatestrike is a Friday, March 15.

The movement has already shown signs of life around the world:

• In January, 60,000 people (adults and students) demonstrated in Switzerland.
• In Brussels in January, the number was 30,000.
• In the Netherlands in February, the number was 10,000 students.
• In February, more than 10,000 children packed Parliament Square in London and demanded action from their elected officials.
• Thousands of students protested in Australia in November 2018, demanding an end to high-profile fossils fuel projects.
• A group of 21 youths in 2015 filed a lawsuit against the United States, alleging that the Government was complicit in efforts to further climate harm. The case, Juliana, et al. v. United States of America, et al. has been heard in federal district court, where a judge upheld the idea that access to a clean environment was a fundamental right. The U.S. Government has appealed the verdict.