Audience: Youth

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including lots of new polling on climate change and the environment as issues in the midterm elections.

Most young adults in Europe want to be involved in action to tackle climate change and have little faith in current leaders to take significant climate action. To best communicate with young adults, build awareness and understanding of what climate justice really means, use language that connects rather than divides, and focus on ideas, inspiration and infrastructure for building action. Survey results show that almost one in 10 respondents said they would be prepared to break the law to tackle climate change, and a large majority (81%) agreed that we need a social transformation – changing our economy, how we travel, live, produce and consume – in order to tackle climate change.

This post includes climate and environment headlines, data points, and key takeaways from recent public polls – including new polls focusing on voters of color, young people, and Latinos.

Disruptive capacity is one of the five “critical capacities*” we focus on at the Lab, which we explored on our Spring Community Call*. During that call, Lab members expressed a particularly strong interest in learning and growing their understanding of disruptive capacity and its role in supporting a powerful climate movement. Read on to learn more about disruptive capacity, what we’re learning from organizations that are employing disruptive tactics, and recommendations for organizations looking to build more disruptive capacity.

Climate activism can serve as a pathway for young people to develop as civic actors, leading to voting and to other forms of participation. There are opportunities to increase access for some youth—rates of taking climate action are lower for some groups, even after accounting for the skills that they bring to climate action. The youngest respondents (ages 14-19) were more likely than their slightly older peers (ages 20-24) to sign petitions, plan events, and use social media to inform and engage. All youth of color are more likely than white youth to plan events on climate and environmental issues. Liberals are most likely to sign petitions, have conversations, contact elected officials, and use social media compared to conservatives, moderate youth, and youth who don’t know their political ideology. Respondents living in rural areas are less likely to have conversations. There are opportunities to strengthen skills for some youth—including the ability to present and discuss information, and to inspire others to do actions (“readiness”), having the knowledge, skills, and availability to do the action (“efficacy”), and having the reasons and the support to do the action (“motivation”).