$4.5M Civil Disobedience: Who Funds The Climate Activists?

It’s eight o’clock in the morning local time when Franziska Elmer accepts the signal video call in her apartment in Playa del Carmen, a town on the Mexican Caribbean coast. You can see a happy-looking woman, a marine biologist by trade, who is researching whether a certain type of algae can be used to store CO₂ and remove it from the atmosphere. But this conversation is about money – money for the global climate fight.

Born in Switzerland, she belongs to the “Scientist Rebellion” (SR), a global group of activists from the science and research sector who practice civil disobedience. Similar to the “Last Generation” in Germany or “Just Stop Oil” in Great Britain, they stick to the streets, block bridges, banks or political institutions.