Mr. Trump’s repeated promises that he will return fossil-fuel workers to their old jobs is at odds with economic reality. It would be more realistic to retrain those workers for renewable energy, which expanded at its fastest-ever rate in 2015, according to the International Energy Agency. The fossil-fuel lobbyists advising Mr. Trump have no interest in that. But his administration can do only so much to resist these larger economic forces — or the young people who are now accelerating them.

That’s why Mr. Trump’s promise to lift restrictions on oil, gas and coal production within his first 100 days in office may not accomplish much. North America’s oil and gas companies do need people to work for them, but not the aging workers of coal country Mr. Trump made central to his campaign. Those companies need young people.

Many of the industry’s skilled workers are reaching retirement, and millennials have no interest in replacing them. Industry research suggests that less than 20 percent of the workers in the oil and gas industry in the United States are young people.

“It’s regarded as a dirty industry and there are some safety concerns, and it’s just not seen as very sexy,” Pavel Molchanov, an industry analyst, told the website Oilprice. If companies like Exxon can’t reverse this trend, the oil and gas industries may find their $100 billion worth of new petrochemical projects severely threatened, Bloomberg concluded in 2013.

Mr. Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach seems unlikely to change young people’s minds. Only 37 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for him, according to exit polls, compared with 55 percent for Hillary Clinton. Millennials know that Mr. Trump’s policies threaten their survival. Climate groups like 350.org, with large followings among young people, are now vowing to “put everything on the line to protect the progress we’ve made and continue to push for bold action.”

This includes an acceleration of fossil-fuel divestment, a campaign that began in 2012 on several dozen college campuses in the United States and has continued to gain steam since. Major financial players are paying attention. The Swiss banking giant UBS calls the movement a “catalyst for change.”

For Mr. Trump to succeed with his destructive environmental policies — and endanger my generation’s future — he will have to reckon with this profound generational shift. If millennials continue to reject careers in oil and gas, swell the ranks of the divestment movement and do everything we can to keep fossil fuels in the ground, Mr. Trump’s plan to repudiate the Paris agreement and expand drilling in the United States will become unfeasible.

We are entering dark times, but with hope, creativity and effort, we don’t have to let them define us.