1Youth climate activism in the United States has risen over the last several years as inaction at the federal level has provoked much worry and frustration. To contest the formidable power of the fossil fuel industry over the American economy (Wright C., Nyberg D., 2021) and over many elected officials, young climate activists have mobilized en masse. Through their protests and their backing of pro-climate electoral candidates, they have raised awareness, helped force the issue onto the agenda, reinforced the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and played an important role in climate legislation.

2Having witnessed devastating weather events and declining biodiversity firsthand, increasing numbers of teens and young adults see the climate issue as an existential crisis and fail to understand why those in power have not taken action. While opinion surveys show that global warming and climate change have never yet been the top priority for Americans as a whole (Tyson A. et al., 2023; Egan P. J. and Mullin M., 2017), young Americans are much more sensitive to climate change than older generations. In a 2020 survey of Americans aged 18 to 29, 80 % of this cohort said that global warming was a major threat to human life on earth as we know it (Barnett B. et al., 2020). Studies also show that young people are at a critical moment of development, both physical and psychological, which makes them particularly vulnerable to stress, anxiety, depression, and feelings of powerlessness. Increasing numbers of youths are experiencing eco-anxiety, the term that designates a condition of extreme worry about current and future harm to the environment caused by human activity and climate change (Wu J., 2020). Eco-anxiety has been a main motivating factor driving youths to become climate activists. This article aims to assess the outcomes of the youth climate movement during the Biden presidency, as activists’ strategies shifted from raising awareness and helping elect progressive Democrats to bringing about actual climate legislation at the federal level.

Awareness building

3The outrage and despair generated by the Trump victory in the 2016 presidential elections, coupled with eco-anxiety, led to an explosion in the number of youth-led groups for climate action and environmental justice. Youths who felt disempowered and were perhaps too young to vote could take action by putting pressure on decision makers from outside the political system, namely by marching in the streets and disrupting the normal functioning of society.

5Currently, as the climate crisis is worsening and activists deem that politicians are not responding fast enough, some groups are resorting to more confrontational methods. These climate activists are targeting key decision makers—including Biden administration officials, fossil fuel representatives and other powerholders—calling them names and disrupting events. Sunrise activists have engaged in “naming and shaming” politicians (Lakhani N., 2020). Climate Defiance, a new group whose modus operandi is to garner attention by disrupting events, was formed in 2023 (Jefferson N., 2023). This organization has aggressively interrupted conferences by shouting insults at the speakers (Jones C., 2023). The stunts are posted in short videos on Instagram or Tiktok. As sociologist Dana Fisher remarked, Climate Defiance activists “are seen as the hot climate group right now [...] they are having some success in being outrageous enough to get attention, and in an election year, that is important. They are certainly pushing the Biden administration” (Milman O., 2024).

6However, to combat climate change effectively, concrete measures passed by legislatures—rather than easily overturned executive orders—are key. To this end, the Sunrise movement, the leading youth climate action group, and Justice Democrats, a youth-led group, have focused on electing progressive candidates in the last few elections.

Electing progressives

7In 2016, youth activists were not only disillusioned with existing advocacy organizations, they also were disenchanted with the two major political parties, which had failed to deliver strong climate policies. They directed their efforts towards the Democratic Party, which was more open to climate action than the Republican Party, which adopted an anti-climate change stance. Since 2018, Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement have targeted Democratic incumbents whose voting records on climate are poor. They have then found a progressive candidate to challenge the incumbent and publicized their progressive candidate’s virtues. Overall, the Sunrise movement endorsed twenty candidates for Congress in 2018 and took credit for helping to elect ten of them. In 2020, after their preferred presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, dropped out, they supported Joe Biden, even though they deemed his climate plan not nearly ambitious enough. One Sunrise electoral coordinator thus remarked: “Biden is super unappealing to young people: he represents the old guard of politics, favoring style over substance. Young people are policy voters, but we have to vote for Biden as he represents the potential for a livable future. Trump represents the ‘apocalypse’” (Lakhani N., 2020).

9In the months leading up to the 2022 midterm elections, surveys and the media predicted a “red wave”, in which Democrats risked losing their majority in both houses of Congress. When that did not happen (Democrats retained the Senate and lost the majority in the House by a much smaller margin than anticipated), headlines credited young voters with staving off the threat. The Sunrise movement’s website (sunrisemovement.org) declared: “In 2022 we contacted over 3 million voters, contributing to the highest youth turnout in a midterm in the last 30 years. Young people once again saved the Democratic Party. Now they must deliver for us”. Not only did the activists intend to hold Democrats accountable, but also their next step was to obtain strong federal climate policy by bringing the ideas of the Green New Deal into the mainstream and helping achieve a federal climate law.

Achieving a federal climate law

10After years of rightwing obstructionism and a default stance of moderation amongst Establishment Democrats, the climate and social justice ideas of the Green New Deal (GND) came onto center stage. Associating this ‘green’ program with the 1930s’ New Deal served to remind Americans of the positive effect of government action in order to create a more equitable society while addressing the climate crisis. This alternative vision of society challenged the current embrace of a neoliberal, free-market, hyper-capitalist society dependent on fossil fuels and was perceived as a danger to those who were making profit from the fossil-fuel driven economy. The Green New Deal was thus opposed by the fossil fuel industry and its partners, including elected officials who received substantial contributions from them, such as Joe Manchin (Goldberg M. et al., 2020).

11President Biden was cognizant of his weak support amongst young voters and took steps to honor his campaign promises, starting by reentering the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office, 20 January 2021. One significant gesture was to delegate to Bernie Sanders the crafting of climate policy in May 2020. Sanders invited both a young progressive leader in the House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and a young Sunrise activist, Varshini Prakash, to take part in the climate task force alongside scientists, economists, and policy experts (Lavelle M., 2020). Based largely on the Green New Deal, the task force developed a comprehensive program of environmental justice and climate mitigation measures that would form the basis for the 2.2-trillion-dollar Build Back Better bill that was passed by the House of Representatives in November 2021.

12Such a sweeping climate and jobs bill was unlikely to pass in the Senate, however—not least due to the opposition of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginian coal magnate. With a 50-50 partisan split, Manchin’s vote was required to pass any legislation in the Senate. After months of wrangling, the Senate’s much weaker climate bill was thought dead in July 2022, but secret negotiations with Manchin resulted in a compromise. To great surprise, the climate bill, rebranded Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), was passed in August 2022. The IRA comprises some $700 billion, of which $369 billion was slated to help build a clean energy economy. While this amount is significantly lower than the original bill, it is nevertheless the most substantial legislation to combat climate change in US history—if not the world, according to John Podesta, Biden’s current climate advisor, who is overseeing its implementation (How Biden’s, 2023). One and two years later, reports showed that IRA policies were producing positive results and that 80-85 % of the incentive funds were going to Republican-controlled states (Marcacci M., 2024; Milman O., 2023). No Republicans voted for the IRA; nevertheless, its benefits to Republican constituents should have a positive effect on its acceptance and durability—even if the Democratic ticket does not win the election in November 2024 (Roberts, 2022).

13Youth climate activists have been quite critical of President Biden because, in their view, his administration has not done enough to address the climate crisis. Despite the IRA being a historic breakthrough for the United States, the activists were disappointed by all the measures that were removed during negotiations. One of Biden’s responses was to issue an executive order to create a climate corps, one of the youths’ key demands that was cut from the IRA. Inspired by the 1930s’ Civilian Conservation Corps, the American Climate Corps is a government-funded jobs program that will provide training and address the need for new infrastructure and skills in the energy transition (Biden launches, 2023). Youth climate activists have strongly criticized the Biden administration for allowing new pipelines to be built (like a segment of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline in Minnesota, cf. Nace A., Hassanzadeh E., 2023) and oil projects to go forward (like the Willow Project in the Arctic), and for issuing new leases for oil drilling following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. President Biden responded that, realistically, the US could not be weaned off fossil fuels in one day and that a transition period was necessary (President Biden, Daily Show, 2023).

Conclusion

14After Joe Biden’s election in 2020, youth climate activists continued to organize myriad street marches, protests, sit-ins, election canvassing, and conferences, and their efforts have obtained results. They have been instrumental in electing progressive candidates to Congress and in helping pass a climate law after decades of congressional gridlock on the issue. The fact that youth organizers were invited to take part in developing federal climate policy is a testament both to their legitimacy as stakeholders and to the Biden administration’s acknowledgement of their right to be heard.

15In a March 2023 interview, Engelfried said:

Last year, we passed the first major piece of climate legislation in the US. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but the fact that we were able to pass something at all around climate in the Inflation Reduction Act—I don’t think that ever would have happened without climate organizing, specifically youth climate organizing. That’s what finally made climate sort of become a priority for people like Joe Biden, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and lawmakers like them. (Climate change with Scott Amyx video 22:19-22:48, 2023)

16Indeed, when President Biden was asked who or what had created the political space for him to take that kind of action, he responded: “Young people, the generation between 18 and 35 now. They’re the ones who created the space” (President Biden, Daily Show, 2023).

17As far as the 2024 presidential elections are concerned, opinion polls portend a tight race, especially in the swing states, and forecasters stress the importance of the youth vote. When Biden was the Democratic candidate—despite the endorsement of 15 groups of mostly Gen Z and millennial voters (Luscombe R., 2024)—the youth vote writ large appeared much more difficult to win in 2024 than in 2020 (Moore E., 2024). However, after President Biden announced on 21 July that he would not seek re-election in November and that he was endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, the dynamics of the presidential race changed dramatically. Voters of Tomorrow published a press release on 26 July announcing that 17 youth groups were endorsing Kamala Harris and explained:

As a champion of reproductive freedom, climate action, economic justice, and gun violence prevention, Vice President Harris is uniquely equipped to build a coalition of young voters who will lead her to victory. Elevating Vice President Harris to the Oval Office would be historic: the first woman, first Asian American, and second Black president. As members of the most diverse generation in our nation’s history, a Kamala Harris presidency would be one in which we see ourselves. (votersoftomorrow.org)

18As of early October, the Sunrise movement, for its part, has not endorsed Harris, but declared that their members will be very active in getting out the youth vote for Harris and Walz (Mesa J., 2024). According to the latest polls conducted in August 2024, two thirds of 18-29 year-olds intend to vote for Harris/Walz, which gives the Democrats a 44-point lead over Republicans Trump/Vance amongst young voters, particularly in critical swing states (Mueller J., 2024). The key will be for this cohort to actually vote, as this age group consistently votes in far fewer numbers than older cohorts (Frey W.H., 2023).