When you think of a climate protest, perhaps you see tens of thousands of people holding signs marching through a big city, like the 75,000 people who took to the streets of New York in 2023 to call for a ban on fossil fuels. Perhaps you picture dramatic shock tactics, like the Just Stop Oil protesters hurling tomato soup at a Vincent Van Gogh painting in London’s National Gallery. Or maybe you visualize activists who have since become celebrities, like Greta Thunberg, who sat outside the Swedish parliament in 2018 calling for a school strike for climate. A few years ago, we noticed that thousands of climate protests were occurring every year, but only a fraction received significant media attention. In addition, protests occurring among the Global Majority were not receiving the same level of media coverage as their counterparts in the West. Many of the people who heard about protesters interrupting a tennis match in New York City were unaware of the Thai citizens protesting against a major hydroelectric project. So in 2022, we launched the Climate Protest Tracker, a tool to help researchers, decisionmakers, and journalists understand how demands around climate policy are spurring civic action.
Introducing Carnegie’s Revamped Climate Protest Tracker | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
