Young people are about to utterly transform climate politics.

Inter-generational justice demands bold, rapid climate action; real climate action demands a giant building boom.

We speak, for the sake of brevity, of “the climate movement.” But there is not one climate movement, but several different movements of people who want climate action, and the tensions between them are rising as younger people get more engaged.

We can see this best, right now, in the U.S. where there is, first, the old mainline environmental movement, which has done the bulk of climate advocacy work for decades.



Largely, this advocacy work has focused on cap-n-trade/CO2 tax policies and support for clean energy.

Mainline enviro groups have tended to treat climate as an environmental issue, indeed, often as one that must be weighed against others (we see this for instance in opposition to windfarms out of concerns for potential bird kills).

And their approach has tended to be technocratic, removed from contact with other social issues and at least overtly bipartisan.

In contrast to these big green groups, we have the older grassroots environmental groups, some of which treat climate seriously. These groups tend to be focused on greenery and lifestyles — local habitat preservation/restoration, recycling programs, etc

Much of the work of older local groups, though, has been to block bad things, like polluting factories, landfills, new freeways and what they see as greedy developers. Local enviros are a core of NIMBY opposition to change.

More recently, we’ve had the rise of what many progressives mean when they say “the climate movement”: a network of NGOs that primarily focus on fighting fossil fuel infrastructure (like pipelines) and pushing for divestment from coal and oil. This is the movement lead by 350.org.

The blockade-and-divest climate movement has been greatly magnified by the rise of a group of investors and regulators who see the dangers of the Carbon Bubble and have been nudging huge funds to divest for practical reasons (e.g. @CarbonBubble, @cdp)

At least as effective in actually driving down emissions, though, has been the urbanist climate movement. These are the newer local movements pushing for green building, transit and walkability, and dense, affordable housing. The YIMBYs.

(Here let me put my own cards on the table: I think there’s absolutely no way that the US can meet real carbon goals without fundamentally reforming urban planning and rebuilding urban/metro infrastructure.



Cities are the key to climate action, as I’ve said for 20 years.)

More recently, we’ve seen the rise of conflicting ideas about justice and the climate movement, which tend to get lumped under “climate justice” — from building local resilience to redistribution — but often have very different goals and aims. That’s worth unpacking another time.

Right now, as well, we’re seeing the rapid rise of business interests who see climate action not as a burden (much less a danger) but as a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity to participate in a huge boom. An iconic example is Tesla.

The business of building a carbon zero economy is about to become by far the most powerful part of the entire climate movement. That alone is going to kick up a lot of conflict, especially among those who consider anti-capitalist aims part of their climate advocacy.

Economic policy and development interests at state and regional levels are also huge players here, and work by yet another set of rules. CA’s climate policies are without a doubt the most important climate policies in America, for instance, but they work with their own dynamics.

On top of this, you have those who are advocating not (just) for reducing emissions but for readiness for disaster: People who want to ruggedize cities and infrastructure; restore ecosystems into the future; even attempt geoengineering and/or “geotherapy.”

On top of all that, you have those who are seeking to support the social stabilization work the planetary crisis will soon demand at massive scales: Folks concerned with forced migration and failed states; food supply and epidemic disease; conflict and recovery.

Take all this (and a few other major interest groups) and now add youth.

Climate change and the planetary crisis it drives are, above all else, generational in their politics.



We olds may individually be doing amazing kick-ass work; the interests of the old and the young on the whole are still in obvious and direct conflict on a number of issues.

First, and foremost, there’s the issue of speed.



Every day we delay, climate risks worsen & the costs of inevitable change rise.



If we care about intergenerational justice, moving at the most disruptive speed we can on cutting emissions is a clear ethical imperative.

That’s because while those risks and costs will fall almost entirely on the younger two-thirds of the population (and future generations) the money from climate destruction is being mostly accumulated by the older third.



Delay is, in this sense, predatory.

On top of speed, though, there’s access.



The reality of American life is not only that younger people are being preyed upon by climate delay, but also that they’re largely shut out from building the lives they want.

We see this in myriad ways, from the housing shortage caused by anti-housing planning policies, to the death grip of car commuting on transportation planning, to the massive costs of education for the young (and its out-dated lack of focus on the tools they really need on a changing planet).

Almost everywhere in America, it’s hard to build the low-carbon new, even though younger people have shown that the low-carbon new is exactly what they want, from car-free neighborhoods to clean energy, bike infrastructure to green multifamily buildings…

So, if you’re a younger person, what you want is a) fast action, b) the chance to build a new low-carbon life and c) a good and meaningful job.

It’s the jobs part that’s going to really jack up the tension in the climate movement. Because for all our enthusiasm for “green jobs,” young people installing solar panels is just the tip of the iceberg, and most of the submerged ice is going to be far more controversial as it rises.

See, many older people have this idea that climate action will be a “transition.” That it’ll be slow, incremental, based on personal choices, largely about small behavioral changes and retrofitting today’s lifestyles with cleantech gadgets — composting food waster and driving a hybrid.



It’s not. Real climate action is disruptive af.

To get the speed of the emissions cuts we need, we’re going to need to build the new on an unprecedented scale, in ways that intentionally alter the fundamental workings of older systems, foreclose high emissions choices and tilt the economics of pollution everywhere.

That build of the new is not a trend that will influence the economy of the future, it IS the economy of the future.



A giant building boom is what successful climate action looks like. That means jobs. Jobs younger people want and will be better prepared to take up.

Young people have a massive self-interest in pushing that boom to happen as fast as possible — a self-interest every bit as strong (and far more ethical) as the self-interest that older people pursue through gradualism and delay.

As young people become more and more powerful in the climate movement, fault lines are going to open. Those cracks are visible now. Older leaders are just in the habit of ignoring them.

The climate movement of the 2020s will be fierce and focused on building the new world we need.



The conflict between old movement interest groups and that new call for action at scale and speed is going to be a — maybe the — major climate story in the coming decade.