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Gen Z Thinks About Climate Change Constantly. Why Don’t They Vote Like It?

High cost of living and political turmoil are forcing climate change to the back burner, exposing a massive voter turnout problem for the environmental movement.

The cost of living, healthcare, and abortion were the top three issues for young voters in the 2024 election, according to a Tufts poll. Financial precarity and political instability are, in many ways, the defining features of young Americans’ futures. A record-high percentage of Americans say their finances are worsening; housing prices are 60 percent higher than in 2019, and credit card debt has risen 63 percent since 2021. It’s easy to see how a relatively post-materialist issue like climate change could get lost in this list of immediate concerns.

“There’s just an uncertainty that young people live with, and climate change is part of that, but it’s only one piece,” said Megan Mullen, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, which aims to advance effective and equitable solutions to pressing environmental challenges. “Climate doesn’t dominate students’ thinking, because there are so many other places of uncertainty for them.”

When survival in the present is already so exacting, thinking about what life may look like in a few decades becomes difficult, if not impossible. Inevitably and understandably, the climate has been placed on the back burner for many people. Though climate remains a concern for many Americans, this pattern indicates that those who care deeply about the climate aren’t considering it a top priority in their voting decisions—or even voting at all.

“It’s only when you narrow down to voters that the number of Americans who list climate as their top priority becomes so small,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the Environmental Voter Project. “Maybe the climate movement doesn’t have a persuasion problem as much as we have a turnout problem.”

Stinnett started the Environmental Voter Project to specifically address lagging electoral engagement. The nonprofit targets the millions of Americans who list the climate as one of their top issues yet don’t vote consistently in elections. In 2024, over 11 million people who identify as environmentalists did not vote in the presidential election.

For politicians, this is a sign that the climate doesn’t need to be prioritized, Stinnett said.

“Ultimately, nothing motivates a politician more than the prospect of winning or losing an election,” he said.

In nine years, the Environmental Voter Project has turned over 2 million of these Americans into consistent voters for presidential, midterm, state,........

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