Fridays for Future and the Ethics of Responsibility. Chances and Contradictions

The environmental crisis is above all an ethical problem: it concerns the way we act, and the serious responsibility of human activities regarding both the global impacts produced and the quality of life on our planet. The above reasons are pushing new generations of students and young people to mobilise and claim the right to inherit a more sustainable future, with the aim to promote wider population awareness about environmental issues, even if sometimes displaying implicit contradictions. The paper aims to investigate the factors that push young people to take part in the Fridays for Future movement through the analysis of the results of a two-step campaign of narrative interviews – first with activists and subsequently with supporters of the movement in Italy – observing frameworks and nuances of their involvement, with a special focus on the implementation of both the ethics of responsibility and principles regarding climate justice.