Polls show Millennials overwhelmingly supported presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Now, the remaining candidates are facing an ambivalence from this generation to stay engaged in the political process.
A new group hopes to keep them engaged around the issue of climate change.
The group says climate change is the single biggest issue that will impact the wealth – or lack thereof – for Millennials.
The group, NextGenClimate, is hoping to motivate Millennials to go to the polls in November and vote for candidates who have the best ideas to lower carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050.
Tom Steyer, a retired hedge fund manager in California, says that both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton made that 50/100 pledge. Donald Trump has not.
Steyer started NextGen in 2013. He seeded the Millennial Vote initiative with a $25 million gift, most of which came from him. He sees climate change as the most important issue facing the Millennial generation.
A survey commissioned by NextGen show that 88 percent of Millennials in Nevada support transitioning to 100 percent clean energy, and that 68 percent are less likely to vote for a candidate who wants to eliminate the EPA. Those numbers hold nationally, too.
However, when Millennials prioritize their 10 most important progressive values, climate change comes in 7th, behind affordable health care, the economy, clean air and water, equal pay, college affordability, and gun saftey laws. When Sanders supporters are asked to prioritize their progressive values, climate change jumps to number 5 on the list, knocking back equal pay and gun safety.
Steyer knows he has an uphill battle in making climate the number one priority among Millennials, but since economics seems to trump social justice in his surveys, he is putting forth an economic message: your income will be significantly lower if we do nothing about climate change.
"One of the things that we felt was true is to put the lie to that myth," Steyer said, "To make sure, that people in Nevada and around the country know that actually moving to clean energy is a big job net, a job creator, that it reduces costs over time and that in fact not acting on this is something that will devastate our economy."
A survey commissioned by NextGen and Demos shows that a 21-year-old college student in 2015 will lose between $142,000 and $187,000 in their lifetime. For people born in 2016, NextGen's calculations suggest that they can lose as much as $764,000 in possible earnings in their lifetimes if nothing is done about climate change.
NextGen is focusing on seven battleground states to get its message out - Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Illinois, Colorado and Nevada. The group has organizers on every college campus in Nevada, in the hopes of boosting Millennial voter turnout in November.
Steyer has no clear plans for what his group will do after November, but he says his organizers are not focusing only on the presidential race. It is important, he says, to elect state representatives who will act on creating new renewable energy businesses, too.
"We're asking for broad based action from the citizens of the United States, including the biggest age cohort in our country, which is the Millennials, to act on what we think is the challenge of our country and our generation," he sadi.
Tom Steyer, founder and CEO of NextGen Climate.
