As we finish this book, schoolchildren are organizing mass walkouts under the banner of ‘Youth Strike 4 Climate’ as part of a global campaign for action on climate change. The movement, which began with 15-year-old Greta Thunberg protesting outside the Swedish Parliament, is the latest to draw attention to the intergenerational injustice of climate change, with today's politicians and adults blamed for short-changing the future. ‘We are going to have to pay for the older generation's mistakes’, one of the school strikers told the BBC (2019). In diverse international contexts, there is growing concern that prior and current generations have made choices that will severely curtail the ability of future generations to pursue their interests and to lead liveable lives (Vanderbeck and Worth, 2014).

Whether knowingly or not, the arguments put forward by these young protesters echo arguments for sustainable development that first rose to prominence in the late 1980s, such as those advanced by the publication of the Bruntland Commission report Our Common Future. Bruntland's definition of sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987: 16) has become a common touchstone for sustainability advocates (Agyeman et al, 2002). Developing in parallel to sustainable development discourses, public debate on climate change has often focused on the need to safeguard the future, for example in the stark warning from Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, that ‘unless we take action on climate change, future generations will be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled’ (citied in Marshall, 2014: 29). These arguments are familiar, but coming from young people they sound unrehearsed, angry, and more urgent.

As Greta's one-girl school strike became international news, inspiring a movement of youth-led protests from Australia to Uganda, a new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the future catastrophe these young people hope to avoid is closer than we may imagine.