Climate Justice between ‘Fridays for Future’ and a Pastor’s Sermon

Abstract Ordinary people can and do make dramatic political change. The issue of climate justice has galvanised not simply environmental activists but also citizens from different generations and walks of life to protest against perceived inaction by their governments and the ostensible greed of corporations in phasing out the use of fossil fuels. Greta Thunberg’s direct action of protest and civil disobedience has given renewed impetus to environmental activism in many different societies and catapulted it onto the mainstream political agenda. Moreover, Thunberg has shown the way forward for climate justice activists to embrace different struggles connected to the driving forces behind environmental damage. Intersectional activism based on the opposition to sexism, neoliberalism and racism is brought to the foreground of redefining what is justice. Thunberg’s activism also captures the mood among the youth, the so-called ‘generation Z,’ that previous generations have not only failed but betrayed them, either due to inability or selfishness, in generating the current environmental crises gripping the planet (Yle News 2019; Piispa and Kiilakoski 2022: 904–905). What makes activism so powerful, in the Arendtian sense, a means for initiating radical political and social transformations is its popular, coordinated and even law less nature. From Gandhi to Black Lives Matter, collective nonviolent action has sought to transgress the formal and official boundaries of what is considered legally acceptable. In a recent visit to Helsinki in Finland, I witnessed two events, a protest and a sermon, that showed the tensions generated by the globalising of environmental activism as it inspires citizens to protest and at the same time comes up against the political and social orthodoxies of national states.