Climate crisis slogans with punch

This now iconic image of Greta Thunberg holding a placard reading "School strike for the climate" was taken outside the Swedish parliament on a Friday in November 2018. Just 15 at the time, Thunberg and her action have since led to the emergence of "Fridays for Future," a global climate crisis movement that has attracted millions of young people around the world.

This slogan, seen in Berlin at an anti-coal rally in 2017, links the #MeToo hashtag that represents sexual harassment and abuse of women with the abuse of Mother Earth and the planet's natural environment. It was created by activists gathered in the German capital to demand an end to power plants fueled by coal, the world's most carbon-heavy, climate change-inducing fossil fuel.

Climate crisis activists blocked traffic in the London financial district during environmental protests by the Extinction Rebellion campaign in April 2019. In addition to signs reiterating the climate emergency, "We can't eat money" has become a popular slogan for Extinction Rebellion, which correlates unfettered capitalism and climate change.

In October last year, activists marched together in the direction of the Hambach open-pit coal mine in Germany's Rhineland region, where coal mining threatens a pristine forest. Despite Berlin agreeing to phase out coal by 2038, this protest banner linked the core anti-coal message with a broader political, social and economic meaning.

As schoolchildren have taken to the streets to fight the climate crisis across the world, an ever-growing range of slogans have peppered the demonstrations. At this March 15 "Fridays for Future" protest in Hong Kong, one student (far right) summed up how the irresponsibility of older generations has forced them to take action.

Students in Cape Town, South Africa also took part in the global March 15 protest — one of some 200 around the world — as part of a worldwide student strike against government inaction on climate change. In addition to holding up placards against ongoing climate change denial, the students chanted slogans such as "Stop denying! Our earth is dying."

When 25,000 people turned up in Berlin to protest at a rally earlier this year, the streets were flooded with placard-waving school strikers who also carried messages on their bodies. These campaigners coupled stickers on their foreheads — one reads "Warning Warming" — with coordinated hand slogans reading "Our future in your hands."

As the "Fridays for Future" protests moved to Aachen near the German-Belgian border in late June, one banner highlighted the inevitable repercussions of burning carbon dioxide at a time when atmospheric carbon levels have reached their highest point in recorded human history.

This popular rallying slogan for climate activists was popularized by, among others, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who stated at a 2014 climate summit in New York that "There is no plan B because we do not have planet B." The slogan is also the title of a 2019 book by author Mike Berners-Lee that illustrates how humanity can sustainably "thrive on this — our only — planet."

The founder of the school strike protests, Greta Thunberg, joined a demo in Hamburg on March 1, just a few weeks after she told business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos: "I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act." This slogan at the Hamburg rally embodies the movement's calls for urgent action.