To announce the next Global Climate Strike which takes place today (3/25), Fridays for Future U.S. unveils “We Don’t Care,” a spot created by FRED & FARID Los Angeles. The film introduces a cast of casually cool pre-teens who question the legitimacy and purpose of climate change concerns directly to the camera. They share the same rhetoric that many in prior generations have stubbornly held, dismissing science and the existential threat that climate change poses. These fashionable adolescents seemingly don’t have a care in the world–but in doing so they help to promote urgency. While the energy of the piece is lighthearted, enriched with the flair of a ‘90s PSA, the message at its core is paramount. We need to turn familiar apathy into serious concern, and serious concern into immediate change.
Ending with an earnest call-to-action, Fridays for Future reminds us: “if we don’t care about climate change, who will?”
Katharina Maier, organizer with Fridays For Future U.S., stated, “The good news is that scientists believe limiting warming is absolutely technically possible. With renewable energy technologies, changes in farming and transport, and shift in our society’s norms, we can limit warming and avoid even worse outcomes. However most of us are not shifting our way of thinking, way of living, way of consuming, way of communicating, etc…It is urgent to act to save our planet before it’s too late and together we can. If we don’t care, who will?”
This new campaign marks the fifth collaboration between Fred & Farid Los Angeles and Fridays for Future. In 2020, Fred & Farid Los Angeles illustrated Greta’s Thunberg metaphor in the spot “House on Fire”. In early 2021, on the day that NASA’s Perseverance Rover touched down on Mars, Fridays For Future U.S. and Fred & Farid Los Angeles unveiled “1%”–a satirical tourism ad for Mars, to awaken the 99% of humans who will have to stay on Earth. And in September 2021, for Fridays for Future’s Global Climate Strike, Fred & Farid launched “The Denial,” a film to illustrate our global denial about the climate crisis, in which a man was simply running into a wall.
