Avi Horwitz isn’t excited to vote in his second presidential election this November.
“Climate change is the unifying crisis of our time,” said the 24-year-old Chicago native, but he hasn’t heard his concerns about it adequately reflected by either major party presidential ticket.
Excitement surged through the younger generations when President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, and Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination. Harris led Biden by 14 points when it came to beating former President Donald Trump among 18- to 34-year-olds, according to a July poll.
But since then, Harris and her vice presidential pick Tim Walz have only made passing mentions of climate change on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly denounced climate change as a “hoax” and his running mate JD Vance has called climate policies a “scam.”
Candidates need to do more than just paint themselves as environmentally friendly to win over young voters, said Alice Siu, a lead researcher on a national survey of first-time voters and the associate director of Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab.
Activists say they are looking for concrete and consistent policies on topics such as environmental justice and clean energy. Harris’ retreat from some previous climate stances doesn’t give them confidence.
Strong sentiments about climate change were one of the most telling predictors of voting behavior in 2016 and 2020, particularly among independents and young Republicans, a University of Colorado study found. A quarter of Republicans who believe climate change is “very important” voted for Biden in 2020, according to the study, likely helping the Democrats secure the White House.
This year, Gen Z’s and millennials’ responses to the Harris-Walz ticket range from enthusiasm to guarded optimism and distrust. Many plan to descend on the United Center next week to elevate climate concerns during the Democratic National Convention, some in support of the Harris-Walz ticket and others in protest.
“We young people really need to see results. We young people are not being tricked anymore by the Democratic Party using the rhetoric we want or talking about the issues. We need to see action,” said Horwitz, a leader in Chicago’s chapter of the Sunrise Movement, a progressive environmental group that has not endorsed either candidate.
Not doing enough
Young liberal voters have long felt Democrats haven’t prioritized the issues important to them, from climate change to police accountability to women’s reproductive health, and “so on and so forth,” said Stevie Valles, executive director of the nonprofit Chicago Votes, which trains people how to set up voter registration drives, panels and volunteer events.
“Now there’s an opportunity, I believe, to resurface those issues that weren’t getting any headway with a Biden administration or the Democratic Party in general,” Valles said. “Vice President Harris has some existing policy stances but this will be her first time in the public eye, running on her own platform since the 2020 primary election, and a lot in the world has changed since then.”
Climate change is an area where she has the opportunity to win young voters. Polling shows that Gen Z and millennials are more concerned with climate change and more likely to have it sway their votes than older generations.
“As a young voter, obviously, with the choice being either between President Biden or former President Trump, it was kind of like being stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Natasha Bhatia, 18.
The first-time voter from Hinsdale is a leader among young activists in the Chicago area. She co-founded the Chicago chapter of Fridays For Future — a global climate movement sparked by environmental activist Greta Thunberg — and attended the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai last year.
While Biden enacted landmark climate policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act — which his administration has touted as the largest investment in clean energy and climate action in U.S. history — other executive decisions such as the approval of the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska meant his actions “canceled each other out,” Bhatia said.
“It really wasn’t enough,” she added. “So looking at someone like Harris, who has so much background in prosecuting environmentally destructive companies and, just in general, her climate-friendly pledges — it’s definitely much more invigorating.”
Harris ran on the Green New Deal in her 2019 presidential campaign; pursued major polluters such as Volkswagen and Conoco Phillips as California attorney general; and created the nation’s first environmental justice unit as San Francisco’s district attorney.
Isak Drangstveit, 18, a recent high school graduate in Madison, Wisconsin, said he would’ve resigned himself to vote for Biden but feels more energized with Harris in the race. Ultimately, however, it’s not about any one party for him.
“I don’t really think that my ballot will read ‘Harris’ or ‘Trump’ this year,” Drangstveit said. “I think it will read ‘climate change,’ or not — and that’s what’s most important.”
While he believes Harris will be better for the planet, he doesn’t think she’s the silver-bullet candidate. He pointed to Harris’ recanted commitments to ban fracking, a technique used to extract oil and natural gas from sedimentary rocks that uses massive amounts of freshwater and can pollute the air with planet-warming greenhouse gases.
“One of my biggest critiques of the Democratic Party walking in on Nov. 5 is that, somehow, someone convinced the Democrats that climate change is still a negotiable policy,” Drangstveit said. “That horrifies me because climate change is already hurting us way more than we thought it would this soon.”
Political analysts believe Harris’ walk back may be a move to win voters in Pennsylvania, a swing state with a large fracking industry.
The Republican party isn’t doing enough about climate change either, according to Danielle Butcher Franz, a 27-year-old from northern Minnesota who identifies as conservative.
She began the American Conservation Coalition shortly after Trump called climate change “a hoax” to unite young Republicans who are also concerned about the environment.
“Republicans really do have to contend with the fact that, if they don’t speak out on this issue, they will become politically irrelevant,” Butcher Franz said.
However, unlike Drangstveit, Butcher Franz does not believe climate change is a top priority in this election.
“We need to be realistic about the fact that this is not a climate election,” she said, noting concerns about other issues like inflation.
While Butcher Franz declined to share who she was voting for in this election, she thinks “there’s more possibility for climate action in a Trump administration than people may realize.” Industry deregulation, while not a policy with an explicit environmental tilt, could fast-track clean energy projects, she said.
Protesting and abstaining
For some, climate change concerns are inseparable from the war in Gaza.
Kirsten Lerohl, 31, and Charlie Berg, 26, are carpooling from Minneapolis to Chicago next week to participate in March on the DNC, a protest to end U.S. aid to Israel. Both are members of the Climate Justice Committee, an environmental justice group with roots in the anti-war movement.
In addition to taking thousands of lives, the Israel-Hamas conflict has created unprecedented soil, water and air pollution in the region, according to a preliminary report from the United Nations. More generally, the world’s militaries account for approximately 6% of greenhouse gas emissions annually and the U.S. military produces more emissions than any other federal agency.
Both Lerohl and Berg say Harris is complicit in the war and do not plan to vote for her.
While neither wants to see Trump in the White House, they see no reason to give Harris a vote.
“Minnesota is always blue so maybe it doesn’t matter,” Lerohl said. She could only fathom voting for the vice president if she completely rescinded her support of Israel.
Single-issue voters, including Lerohl and Berg, are guided by a strong sense of what political psychologists call moral conviction: the belief that one’s feelings are based on a clear sense of right and wrong.
“(These voters) are less willing to be pragmatic about political choices. They’re less likely to make trade-offs between that issue and other issues,” said Christopher Federico, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota.
The Minnesotans’ views did not change when Harris announced their governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate last week. Even though many climate activists have praised Walz’s record — most notably requiring state utilities to be carbon-free by 2040 and reforming permitting provisions to support a quicker clean energy transition — Letohl and Berg haven’t been impressed.
Walz did not support the Climate Justice Committee’s local efforts to shut down a Minneapolis foundry that was contaminating an environmental justice neighborhood with lead. He also approved the expansion of the controversial Line 3 oil pipeline through wetlands and indigenous land.
“He’s caught this media framing as being a progressive or being sort of the real deal with the Democrats, and it’s odd to me — as somebody who’s been an activist in Minnesota for some time — because all the things we care about he’s been an obstacle, not an ally,” Berg said.
Seeking to sway Harris
Another camp of progressive environmentalists is trying to toe a careful line between supporting the Harris-Walz ticket and pushing Democrats to take a stronger stance on climate issues.
“A good politician finds a center and runs to it as quickly as possible,” said Kaniela Ing, 35. He served two terms in Hawaii’s state legislature before founding the Green New Deal Network, a coalition of progressive organizations advocating for a swift clean energy transition and ceasefire in Gaza, among other causes.
“It’s up to organizations like ours and organizers to shift where that center is,” he said.
The network had no intention to endorse Biden and planned to be less involved in the convention when he was running for reelection, according to Ing. It was difficult for the organization to reconcile with the president’s ties to fossil fuel companies.
Ing cited consternation at Biden’s approval of a large deepwater oil export terminal off the coast of Texas and the Willow project like Bhatia, the 18-year-old from Hinsdale.
Like Line 3 in Minnesota, Line 5 presents another fossil fuel and environmental justice concern that hits close to home for young activists in parts of the Midwest. Both pipelines are owned by Canadian company Enbridge.
The 70-year-old Line 5 transports 22 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas underground from Superior, Wisconsin, to refineries in Ontario, Canada. It has had several spills that endanger farmland, wetlands and freshwater in the Straits of Mackinac that connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. It has faced strong opposition from local communities, including the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians in northern Wisconsin.
Drangstveit, the 18-year-old from Madison, has advocated against Line 5 in Washington, D.C., the Bad River Reservation and at a meeting with Biden.
“He had the chance to take the permit away from Line 5, and he didn’t,” he said, alluding to the presidential permit under which the pipeline has been operating and which opponents have called on him to revoke. “He is one of the most climate-forward presidents we’ve ever had — that’s because we haven’t had presidents to deal with climate.”
According to Ing, if Biden was serious about climate, he wouldn’t have ceded to conservative interests and abandoned the Build Back Better Plan. The result of these compromises with Republicans was the Biden-Harris administration’s less aggressive but still historic law: the Inflation Reduction Act.
The network sees an opportunity to get more ambitious with climate action under Harris. It endorsed her last week and is considering participating in some climate panels at the convention.
“Things aren’t predetermined. Before there were no open questions. Now, that’s not the case. Strategies need to be developed,” said the network’s campaign director Saul Levin, 28.
As a senator and presidential candidate in 2019, Harris co-sponsored the Green New Deal — the network’s namesake. The bill called for converting the electric grid to clean energy by 2030; declared clean air, clean water and healthy food basic human rights; endorsed free healthcare; and took steps to make housing more affordable.
Harris has since distanced herself from the failed bill after Republicans framed it as a socialist coup. But, for young activists, Harris embracing the movement by name matters less than actions.
“She can use the term Green New Deal or not,” said Ing. “As long as she’s talking about supporting family farmers, modernizing our transportation system so it becomes world-class again and getting those green jobs that protect workers, then that’s all we can ask for.”
Negative affiliation
Gen Z’s and millennials’ political loyalties are more fluid than those of older generations who have been voting for the same party for decades, said Federico, the Minnesota professor.
Horwitz, the 24-year-old Chicago native, hopes Harris will declare a climate emergency and invest in climate-resilient solutions but ultimately plans to vote for her no matter what because he views it as a vote against Trump.
His decision reflects a larger trend toward negative affiliation with one party being less about alignment with that party and increasingly about disdain for the opposing party, said Federico.
Only 43% of Harris voters younger than 45 said their vote was in support of her rather than against Trump in a July poll.
If Biden didn’t drop out, Valles from Chicago Votes said he expected Trump to win by a historic margin as people of all ages disappointed in the system skipped the polls. Now, those folks might find it more palatable to vote for Harris as an “anti-Trump vote” than it would’ve been to vote for Biden.
