Global Warming

Over the course of the last week, I've picked through the polling results from the recent Harvard Institute of Politics Survey and the joint MTV/CBS News poll. We've talked about Obama's lead among young voters, and McCain's deficit among the same, and we've talked about how young people are engaged at a much higher level this year than in previous years. Now I want to take a look at young voter's policy concerns.

There tend to be a few bits of conventional wisdom when it comes to young voters and policy issues. The first is that the only thing young people care about is the draft, or as Ralph Nader recently (and inaccurately) stated, the only thing that will increase youth engagement is the threat of a draft. The second is that young people are consumed by humanitarian issues like the genocide in Darfur. There are grains of truth in both statements - in 2004 there was a lot of messaging done by Rock the Vote and other groups around the draft that did in fact help spur youth turnout, and young people are disproportionately active around the issue of genocide. As with most pieces of conventional wisdom, though, these do not convey the whole truth.

The results of the Harvard IOP Survey reveal that the concerns of young voters have shifted radically since the fall of 2007. Six months ago, Iraq was the #1 issue for 37% of young Americans. Today, that number has shrunk to 20%. In March 2007, the economy was the top concern of just 5% of young people. Today it ranks as the greatest concern of 30% of young voters. The war was a motivator for youth action in 2004, but in 2008, it seems that the tanking economy will drive young people to the ballot box.

The Harvard IOP Survey honed in on these concerns through its novel use of multiple criteria in ranking the importance of youth issues. The survey asked respondents what issues were most important in determining how they would cast their ballot in November and what issues were most relevant to them personally. They used answers in both categories to construct a composite score that could more accurately reflect the importance of various policy issues to young voters:

The reasons for this shift, it turns out, is that most young people feel that our current economic downtown has a greater impact on them personally than the war. Young people who are applying to college or attending school are worried about the skyrocketing costs of tuition. Many are graduating from college, on average, with $20k in debt, and they are worried about their job prospects. According to the survey, 70% of college students believe that it will be difficult to find a job upon graduation. By contrast, the war only directly affects a small portion of young people today. If you are worried about how you will pay off your student loans and make rent next month, it gets a lot harder to worry about something happening on the other side of the globe. It's probably even harder when you consider how much activism has gone to opposing the war with so few tangible results.

Looking through the chart, there are some other interesting facts to be gleaned about the activism and policy concerns of the Millennial generation. In most polls that I've seen, the environment ranks well below bread and butter issues like the economy and health care. As the graph above shows, the environment typically garners a paltry 5% or so of support from most youth. Yet the environment usually is considered one of the policy areas around which young people - particularly college students - are most active. Meanwhile, health care consistently ranks as one of the top concerns of young people, but there is almost no youth activism around universal health care. It's a strange dichotomy and I've been at a loss to explain it.

Judging by the IOP results, "Net Relevance" seems to be the key. Both issues are perceived as important ones, yet for some reason young people tend to see the environment as a policy concern that more directly affects their lives. It's an interesting finding, and may be skewed by the fact that the survey sampled 18 - 24 year olds, fully half of which are in college and are thus likely to be on their university's health care plan (or that of their parents). I wonder if the two stats might reverse (and fall more in line with conventional wisdom) if the sample was expanded to cover all 18 - 29 year olds?

What's clear is that young people are driven by a variety of concerns, but the economy trumps all. In a year of record youth turnout, candidates up and down the ballot would do well to talk about creating an economy that help the Millennial generation - also known as Generation Debt - climb out of the economic hole.

Over at It's Getting Hot in Here, they've put together a listing of job/volunteer/internship opportunities for those looking to work in the youth climate movement over the summer.

Opportunities include:

Mountain Justice Summer (May 17-23 & all summer, Camp Blanton, KY & Appalachia): Mountain Justice Summer is a call to action and a request for help from the people of the Appalachia mountains for help in saving our mountains, streams–and forest from greedy coal companies. With an emphasis on education, strategy, non-violence and cultural sensitivity the MJS training camp will provide participants with comprehensive workshops covering the impacts and politics behind mountain top removal mining and the hands-on tactical training to take to the mountains and do something about it. Take this opportunity to share strategies and build relationships that will create an even stronger network of allies and coalitions organizing resistance to MTR this summer and beyond! Contact: danny@seac.org

Summer of Solutions (June 1-Aug 1st, Twin Cities, MN): In the Summer of Solutions young people from around the country will work together to engage communities across the Twin Cities in cutting-edge community-based global warming solutions and to build a strong network of new climate leaders with the skills to lead their communities towards a sustainable future. With the help of youth mentors and community allies and the support of other participants like yourself, you’ll get to shape course of the Summer of Solutions through your own work. We will focus on harnessing the power of community by building the capacity of existing local and national alliances, and integrate a broad range of student-run initiatives and strategies through a systems-based approach to climate activism that unites policy change, social entrepreneurship, movement capacity building, and community organizing. Projects include working with Cooperative Energy Futures to advance residential energy efficiency, and ARISE (Alliance to Re-Industrialize for a Sustainable Economy) to help develop and use the local Ford Assembly Plant as an example of the new green industrial paradigm. Contact: summerofsolutions@gmail.com

Northwest Institute for Community Energy: ” A Think-and-Do Tank” (July 7 - August 24th, Portland, OR): The Northwest Institute for Community Energy (NICE) will be a seven-week-long, hands-on training program focusing on innovative renewable energy project development, community organizing and activism. Youth will be working in Portland to establish a cooperatively owned neighborhood geothermal heating system while receiving trainings and experience on a variety of activism, organizing and project management skills. Participants will also take part in the week-long Environmental Leadership Training Program (SPROG) run by the Sierra Student Coalition in Oregon, August 10-17th. The seven week program will conclude with a week-long backpacking adventure in the Cascade Mountain Range. Contact: jesse.d.jenkins@gmail.com

This is just a taste. Go check out the rest.

I really must have been paying too little attention to national politics over the past few months, because this totally slipped my attention.
West Virginia Blue (via a MyDD diary) noted that an absolutely horrendous and potentially disastrous energy bill was introduced in the Senate last week in January, and one of it's sponsors was Mr "Audacity of Hope", Barack Obama. The New York Times has a good rundown of the issue (emphasis added):

Prodded by intense lobbying from the coal industry, lawmakers from coal states are proposing that taxpayers guarantee billions of dollars in construction loans for coal-to-liquid production plants, guarantee minimum prices for the new fuel, and guarantee big government purchases for the next 25 years.
...
Among the proposed inducements winding through House and Senate committees: loan guarantees for six to 10 major coal-to-liquid plants, each likely to cost at least $3 billion; a tax credit of 51 cents for every gallon of coal-based fuel sold through 2020; automatic subsidies if oil prices drop below $40 a barrel; and permission for the Air Force to sign 25-year contracts for almost a billion gallons a year of coal-based jet fuel.
...
But coal-to-liquid fuels produce almost twice the volume of greenhouse gases as ordinary diesel. In addition to the carbon dioxide emitted while using the fuel, the production process creates almost a ton of carbon dioxide for every barrel of liquid fuel.
...
“At best, you’re going to tread water on the carbon issue, and you’re probably going to do worse,” said Howard Herzog, a principal research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of “The Future of Coal,” a voluminous study published in March by M.I.T. “It goes against the whole grain of reducing carbon.”

Why would Obama make such a brazen anti-environmentalist move, one that flies in the face of the cries for action on carbon emissions from the American Public and the World? Obama's excuse is that it is for energy independence, after all, if you don't support pushing us further towards environmental catastrophe then the terrorists have already won. Of course the real reason is the same reason that made me decide that I wouldn't go anywhere near politics as a young man: Obama's state is full of coal, and the powerful people who have given him the millions of dollars to run for Senate and the Presidency want payback.

My big question is do Democratic voters care enough about the Global Warming issue to make it a wedge issue for the election? Are people so lulled to sleep by Obama's pillow talk that they fail to understand how morally repugnant his actions are?

Here's what a real leader has to say on the issue :

This Grist blog post is also right: Barack Obama is not serious about Global Warming, as is this post by Stoller.