Over the last five years, groups and organizations like Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future emerged to mobilize against climate change and adopted more radical measures than the environmental movement has traditionally used. Although temporarily disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a global nonviolent civil resistance movement is coalescing and it is clear that its leaders have been studying and drawing lessons from the field of civil resistance studies. […]

After Greta Thunberg, the social force that has drawn most attention to climate change in recent months is Extinction Rebellion (XR), a London-based environmental group committed to nonviolent civil resistance. In little more than a year, XR has seen its profile rise dramatically, owing in part to its disruptive tactics and use of art and theatre. […]

Student climate strikers have sought to get local and national authorities to “treat the climate crisis as a crisis” by passing climate emergency declarations. The NGO Climate Mobilization now estimates that over 221 million people are represented by governmental entities that have made such declarations. This fundamental reframing work is a strategic first step in galvanizing power of ordinary citizens around the world to pressure their governments to take action.