Among a certain section of the Conservative commentariat, there’s been a lot of chatter about the cultural factors encouraging young people to support Labour. Unwilling to take the steps necessary to address material issues such as spiralling housing costs, wage stagnation and the casualisation of employment, they hunt for alternative answers. Increased higher-education participation is exposing younger generations to the pernicious propaganda of Marxist academics. The nebulous, intractable characteristic that is “coolness” – and how the left seems to have a monopoly on it nowadays.

The thing is, it’s not only teens and 20-somethings who the Conservatives are struggling to appeal to. YouGov has identified that anyone under 47 is statistically more likely to back Labour. It’s embarrassingly obtuse to suggest this trend might be reversed if they could only get a few grime artists on their side.

Actually listen to them speak, and young Labour voters will explain their concerns. They are stuck on zero-hours contracts earning barely more than minimum wage, with no guarantee they will be able to make rent from one month to the next. Some are reliant on disability benefits and – despite the comparative weakness of the 2017 Labour manifesto on this topic – trust Jeremy Corbyn because of his consistent history. They are freelancers who earn a liveable income when things are going well, but know it could disappear at any moment.

They cite the looming threat of climate change as a reason they are hesitant to bring children into the world

For increasing numbers of working-age people, the defining theme of their lives is insecurity. Insecure employment. Insecure, impermanent housing. And for many, there is a more existential feeling of insecurity that comes from living at this exact moment in time, with the knowledge that we’re teetering on the edge of a climate precipice.

When I talk to friends about the future, they often mention financial difficulties as a barrier to settling down and perhaps starting a family. Equally commonly, though, they will cite the looming threat of climate change as a reason they are hesitant to bring children into the world. And it’s not only big decisions that are guided by fear of environmental disaster – your whole outlook changes when total social collapse feels like a realistic possibility in your lifetime. It’s constant background music, preventing you ever getting too comfortable regardless of your current material circumstances. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a decent employer-arranged pension scheme, who knows what the world will look like when you’re old enough to cash it in?

Countless trend pieces have been written about millennials’ tendency to live in the moment, and our preference for spending money on experiences rather than objects. But rarely does there seem to be any focus on the structural factors driving these behavioural changes. Many older commentators expressed surprise at a recent piece of research by YouGov, which found that 18- to 28-year-olds list climate change as their top political priority. Some of those same individuals previously scoffed at research showing younger people experience anxiety and other mental health issues at a higher rate than older demographics smugly chuckling about “safe spaces” and the “snowflake generation”. I’m not sure it has even occurred to them that these two things might be related, despite data showing almost half of 18- to 30-year-olds feel worried about the future. Immediate financial stresses and longer-term fears combine to induce an overwhelming feeling of precarity.

Of course, mine is far from the first generation to come of age in the shadow of a looming catastrophe. I imagine the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation must have influenced many people’s outlook throughout the cold war. During both world wars, people’s lives had very little certainty at all. Soldiers on the frontline knew every day might be their last. Families waiting at home worried they would lose a father, husband or son – and plenty did. A bomb might have reduced their homes to rubble in an instant. Invasion and occupation was a terrifying possibility.

What’s unique about the current context, though, is that the threat isn’t an external entity bringing about unwanted change. The danger is that things carry on exactly as they are. Free-market capitalism has driven the reckless production, consumption and pollution that now threatens continued existence of our species. To avoid our obliteration, it will require stringent government regulation and international cooperation. President Trump’s fossil fuel advocacy and hostility to climate cooperation have made him a symbol of capitalist destruction.

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Reaching adulthood around the time of the financial crisis had already given us reason to question the current economic system – lectures from Conservative prime ministers about the wonders of the free market are unlikely to convince when you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, spending half your income on rent and constantly terrified that your employer might cut your hours. People my age are not necessarily avowed anti-capitalists, but there’s a genuine appetite for change. Scaremongering about even the moderate, social democratic reforms proposed by Labour sounds ludicrous when the existing arrangement so clearly isn’t working. And a politics focused on maintaining the status quo seems grossly negligent when the fate of our entire ecosystem hangs in the balance.

Conservatives need to understand that the comparative political radicalism of younger generations isn’t some strange quirk or foible – it’s a rational response to the world as we find it. As living standards decline, financial insecurity rockets and an unprecedented volume of extreme weather events wreak havoc across the globe, the more confusing position is to insist that everything will be fine if we just carry on as we are.

• Abi Wilkinson is a freelance writer