On a bright, uncommonly warm Friday of mid-March, I, together with perhaps twenty other students in my class, joined the worldwide school strike movement “Fridays for Future” to protest against climate change and against our government’s complete inaction towards this unprecedented incoming catastrophe. We were all inspired by one small girl, with a round, benevolent face, and two plaits hanging down over her shoulders accoutred with a thin white wool hat; Greta Thunberg.
“The situation is so hopeless that teenagers are proving to be more responsible than adults” my banner read, in dark, rather abject scarlet letters. These last European elections have proven a surge in Green Parties across our continent. They now hold, in total, 69 seats in the European parliament.
In France, the Greens have gained 13 seats and in Germany, with 22 seats, they have surpassed the historically leading opposition party, the Social Democrats (SPD), obtaining their best result and taking the second place only behind Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU). Moreover, this surge is not only developing in France and Germany, green parties have also made significant progress in countries like Britain (11 seats), Spain (3), Belgium (3), The Netherlands (3) and even Ireland (2).
