It was 28 August 2018 when for the first time the expression "climate strike" appeared on the pages of LifeGate. A week had passed since activist Greta Thunberg had begun, on 20 August, her protest actions outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm, without stopping. Today there are more than 100 articles published on our outlet that contain this expression.

There can be no objection, then, to the decision by the lexicographers at Collins dictionary — the British equivalent of Italy's Treccani — to elect "climate strike" as the word of 2019. The choice was driven by a hundredfold increase in its use in the English language within the space of a year. From the very first Friday that Thunberg skipped school — went on strike, in fact — she always carried a sign bearing the Swedish words "skolstrejk för klimatet", school strike for the climate. The handwriting on that sign became so well known and recognisable that it inspired an actual typeface, a font: the Greta Grotesk.

Collins defines climate strike as "a form of protest in which people absent themselves from education or work in order to join demonstrations demanding action to counter climate change".

Read also: How the third global climate strike went, in emotions and numbers

The expression was first used during a demonstration held at the United Nations climate conference in 2015 (COP 21), which subsequently gave rise to the Paris Agreement, the first international treaty signed by the entire global community to do something about the climate crisis. But it is over the past year that the expression climate strike has been commonly used to describe the demonstrations and strikes held in hundreds of cities across every continent, becoming a form of global protest that has involved millions of people, workers and students alike.

Treccani has also introduced a neologism into the Italian encyclopaedia: the expression "Greta generation", coined precisely to define "the generation of young and very young people inspired by the actions" of Thunberg, who is devoting her life to "raising public awareness and that of leaders of all nations about the risks stemming from" global warming and urging them, therefore, to take immediate action.

The strike is the highest form of protest, and using it to demand the defence of the Earth for everyone — not the wellbeing of a few — represents its sublimation. The environmental and climate movement therefore acts as a battering ram for all other movements calling for greater rights, equality and parity. Because it carries within itself the spark capable of igniting the search for a fairer world. Starting from the very need to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all", as stated in goal number 4 of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Today there are still 260 million girls and boys around the world who do not attend school.