The 1950s teenage male dream when I was growing up in Seattle, Washington was obtaining a drivers license and buying a car at age 16. And it wasn't just any car, but one that was souped-up, lowered, loud, and possessed of metallic paint and pin striping. For this I saved checks as a grocery store bag boy for two years. This dream today would seem quaint and definitely unfashionable. I suspect most teenage boys now would rather have a top-of-the line iPhone or gaming devise instead of a driver's license or car. In my day socializing took place in and around motor vehicles, and involved cruising around, racing, and hanging out in fast food parking lots. The leisure experience was highly entropic, burning up huge volumes of dirt-cheap gasoline. In Seattle, we couldn't wait for the newly constructed freeway system to open up so we could drive at 60 mph or better from one end of the city to the other. Now, I suspect, a high-speed Internet connection is way more important for teenagers than driving around on freeways or anywhere else.
This impression finds support in statistics on drivers' licenses and driving for young people. The average annual miles driven by Americans in this country peaked in 2004 at a little more than 10,000, and dropped 6% by 2011. The American love affair with the automobile appears to be on the wane, and post-materialist Millennials are leading the way to alternative passions. Between 2001 and 2009, the average yearly miles travelled by car for young people (age 16-34) decrease from 10,300 to 7,900, a drop of 23%. Over this same period, the number of 20-34 year olds without drivers' licenses increased from 10 to 15 percent. A downward trend in driving could well be a consequence of dire economic conditions created by the Great Recession of 2007-2009, but the reduction began before the recession hit, and so far driving has failed to pick up in the recovery.
Reductions in driving by young people may well originate instead in fundamental shifts in attitudes. After World War II, Americans bought into the dream of owning a single-family home in the spatially expansive and auto-dependent suburbs. People wanted to drive and were perfectly happy with the necessity of a motor vehicle for getting from point A to B. For Millennials, the bloom is off the auto-oriented suburban rose, and they now look more often to densely packed, transit-oriented central cities as places to live. Recent surveys tell us that young people more than other age groups claim to have made conscious efforts to reduce their driving. The youngest and oldest age groups more than others prefer to live in so-called "smart growth" neighborhoods with a mix of single and multiple family dwellings and access to public transit, stores, restaurants, libraries, and schools within walking distance. The young especially prize nearby rail links and bus routes. The college-educated young and older empty nesters have fostered much of the four decades old boom in downtown living in many central cities previously suffering rampant population losses. To put it simply, densely packed older cities today offer access to activities and experiences less readily available in the suburbs, and in those cities getting around by walking, biking, or taking public transit is often easier than driving. One can move about readily in the city without driving much, but to live in the suburbs without a car would be a serious challenge.
In my youth social interaction required a car. To see friends one drove. The car was the admission ticket to the teenage club and an essential symbol of one's standing in the social pecking order. Today social life is increasingly an online affair. Communication is virtual and immediate and doesn't require physical travel. Through texting, Facebook, Twitter, and online gaming, young people much more than others socialize virtually rather than driving to meet their friends. When they do get together, they are more inclined than their elders to walk, bike, or take public transit, all eased by living at high densities in walkable cities with bike sharing programs and decent bus and rail systems. Getting around cities is also facilitated by smartphone apps that tells you when the next bus is coming or where the nearest bike-sharing site can be found, or helps you get a ride with Lyft or Uber. When you absolutely need a car, you can rent one quickly through Zip Car or Cars to Go; ownership isn't required.
Substituting virtual sociality for driving isn't an entropic free lunch. Huge energy-sucking data centers keep the Internet running and make possible all the stuff we like to do on our devices. Keeping an iPhone charged for the average user over the course of a year requires about 24 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy, a little less than the 33 kWh used up burning a gallon of gasoline. But when you add the average annual energy use for the Internet, the per-iPhone user energy requirement rises to about 388 kWh, a little more than a kWh per day. Driving 10,000 miles a year at 25 miles per gallon, however, requires a whopping 13,200 kWh. Entropically speaking, your iPhone and your car are not in the same ballpark. Substituting the Internet for driving indeed reduces energy consumption.
Not all sociality occurs online for Millennials. When they get together, they want doing so eased by close proximity. Instead of living in spread-out, auto-dependent suburbs so loved by their elders, Millennials prefer more densely packed urban centers with abundant places to meet, such as cafes and espresso shops, and the convenience of getting to them by biking or walking. The suburban dream has lost its cache for Millennials who see their aspirations best satisfied in downtown living. This could change, however, if central city education reform is slow in coming and Millennials opt for the suburbs to assure access to good schools for their kids just as their parents did.
Youthful creative types, along with the return of aging suburban expats, fuel much of the boom in condominium construction and conversion of distinctive older commercial buildings to residences in downtowns around the country. Both groups are attracted to the excitement of urban street life in neighborhoods with concentrations of trendy restaurants, theaters, art galleries, espresso shops, brew pubs, bookstores, and entertainment venues. Retailing matters, but its orientation is to specialty foods or wines, boutiques, and outdoor stores that serve the active life of the new inner city residents.
The interest of affluent young professionals in downtown living finds confirmation in a Brookings Institution study of census data by Eugenie Birch, Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. In a sample of 44 cities, downtown population grew by ten percent in the 1990s and the number of households expanded 13 percent, a substantial recovery after years of decline. In 2000 25 to 34 year olds compose a quarter of downtown populations, up from 13 percent 30 years earlier. The proportion of downtowners having a bachelor’s degree rose to 44 percent by 2000, a figure that exceeds both that for cities as a whole and their suburbs. The young and the educated moving downtown are exactly those groups where post-material values predominate. More recent studies confirm that this is a continuing trend.
Millennials are doing the environment a good turn in their propensity to live in dense, walkable, energy efficient urban communities and their reduced desire for motor vehicle ownership and driving relative to their older peers. If Millennials continue these behavior patterns into the future, they will possess a lower carbon footprint than the older generations that they will ultimately replace. Because central city living results in a substantial reduction in per capita energy consumption and carbon emissions in comparison to the suburbs, a redistribution of population from suburbs to central cities will be good for the environment as will increases in suburban population densities in response to Millennial demand for walkable communities. The prospect for such changes gives us a measure of hope for our environmental future no matter what happens in the political arena.
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Such trends are important for bringing climate change to a halt, but, as is becoming increasingly clear, concrete action to reduce greenhouse emissions on a global scale is required to stabilize our climate and environmental future. While the state of the global environment failed to take center-stage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, that election mattered by putting Trump administration climate-change deniers in charge of a big chunk of the global climate chicken coop. This election has given them the power to bring to a halt government efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions by U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, halting implementation of the Clean Power Plan, and rolling back regulations requiring improvements in motor vehicle energy efficiency know as the CAFE standards. These actions will increase emissions of the world’s second largest greenhouse gas polluter, the U.S., and will give other nations license to dampen their own emission control efforts. Fortunately, these are actions that can be reversed by future presidents. The targets of the Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions will likely be met in the future as the consequence of coal being displaced by natural gas in the generation of electricity irrespective of what the Trump Administration does simply because natural gas is cheaper per unit energy than coal and emits about half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as coal. Bring back coal in the face of market forces looks like a pipe dream. CAFE standards can be tightened by a future pro-environment president enough to makeup for any short-term losses in emission reductions and the Paris Accords rejoined. Better yet, a future president can put a price on greenhouse emissions, much like the states of California and Washington, stimulating both emissions reductions and the creation of a job-intensive clean energy sector.
In short, our political future matters for the sake of our global environment, and here is where the Millennials, and younger generations in general, come in. If younger generations are stronger environmentalists than older, then we can have hope for our environmental future. Of course they have to vote for a pro-environmental president in the future, but the 2016 Election and the Bernie Sanders phenomena demonstrated this willingness. even though they were not excited by Hilary Clinton, Millennials supported Clinton to a greater extent than older voters.
The question is, where do Millennials stand on the environment relative to older generations? A recent survey by PEW doesn’t offer much optimism on this question. In early 2014, in asking what describes them very well, 32 percent of Millennials described themselves as “an environmentalist” while the same number was 42 percent for both members of Generation X and the Baby Boom Generation. The results of the World Values Survey, administered 2011-2014 paints a more nuanced picture of where Millennials and others stand on the environment, as we will now see.
The data source used in the following analysis comes from wave 6 of the World Values Survey, a global sample survey of a full array of human values under the auspices of the World Values Survey Association composed of 100 member countries. For a full explanation of the methodology behind the survey, go to the World Values Survey web site, http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org. The well-regarded survey is funded by member countries and a variety of foundations and administered in person to a randomly selected set of respondents by professional staff and is confined to adults 18 and older. Wave 6 covers 60 countries and a total sample of 86,274 respondents, including 2,232 in the U.S. The survey includes more than 200 discrete questions on demographic characteristics, such as respondent age, number of years of educational attainment, relative income, and gender, and a huge number of value-oriented inquiries such as a self-ranking of political preference on a left-right spectrum, respondent expressions of environmental concern, and reports of participation in environmental actions. These sorts of questions are of special interest to us here, in addition to one about postmaterialism, which will be described later.
Successive waves of the World Values Surveys contain more discerning questions about respondent attitudes and practices towards the environment. The latest wave (wave 6), asks respondents questions not just about respondent environmental concerns, but more importantly about concrete actions taken in support of the environment. The common refrain, “actions speak louder than words,” is certainly worth considering in any inquiring into political support for the environment. The Pew study sticks instead to a general question about whether or not respondents describe themselves as environmentalist without any reference to what that means.
Environmental concern can be measured from the World Values Survey result using a two part question that requires a tradeoff between environmental protection and economic growth. Each respondent chooses one of the following two statements that best reflects their attitude: (1) Protecting the environment should be give priority, even if it causes slower economic growth and some loss of jobs; (2) Economic growth and creating jobs should be the top priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent. In posing this question, the World Values Survey gives the issue of environmental concern a specific context by eliciting attitudes towards the environment relative to the economy.
Of all respondents who answered this question, 46 percent of Millennials gave the environment priority over economic growth while only 36 percent of older generations did so, a comparatively large and statistically significant difference. Millennials are more willing than their older peers to sacrifice economic growth for improvements in the environment.
Three different questions in wave 6 provide measures of actual respondent behaviors directed at environmental improvement, including whether the respondent (1) is an inactive or active member of an environmental organization, (2) has recently given money to an ecological organization, or (3) has recently participated in a demonstration for some environmental cause. Of all respondents, 13.2 percent of Millennials report being inactive members of an environmental group while 12.7 percent of older generations do the same. In the case of active membership, the figures are 4.2 percent for Millennials and 4.9 percent for older generations. In both cases, the differences are relatively small and not statistically significant. Millennials and their older peers participate in environmental organizations at nearly the same rate.
In contributing to ecological organizations and attending environmental demonstrations, Millennials and their older peers part company. Of Millennials, 14.7 percent contributed to an ecological organization, but they were outpaced by the older peers of which 19.7 percent contributed. On the other hand, 10.3 percent of Millennials attended environmental protests while only 4.8 percent of older generations did so. Older generations give money while younger generations protest. This is an unsurprising result in light of the higher income levels of older generations and the inclinations of youth for direct action.
From these World Values Survey results, Millennials look to be at least as environmentally oriented as their older peers, and in their willingness to sacrifice economic growth for the environment and to demonstrate on behalf of the environment, more so. This is especially important in light of the timing of this survey. Millennials appear to have been hit hard by the Great Recession ending in 2009 and by the survey year, 2011, the economy had only begun to recover. Given the economic hardships and uncertainties they face, it is especially surprising that Millennials are willing to sacrifice economic growth for the sake of the environment more so than others.
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The desire of Millennials for downtown living and their commitment to the environment hint at a basic shift in values in comparison to older generations. A value shift of this kind is the subject of a lengthy line of research on a concept coined as postmaterialism by University of Michigan Political Science professor, Ronald Inglehart. Postmaterialist research hypothesizes that economic and social conditions prevailing as we grow up deeply shape our fundamental outlook for life. As one generation replaces another over the long haul, the predominance of particular social and political values in the population as a whole will change in accordance with divergent generational experiences. Research on postmaterialism finds that younger generations are less oriented to materialist economic values than their predecessors if steady improvements in personal and economic security occur for successive generations in their formative years. Advancements in economic and personal security allow the young to begin adult life at a more elevated point in Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs which includes (1) the basic needs such as food, drink, sleep, and sex; (2) the need for safety; (3) the need for a sense of belongingness including love, affection, and acceptance in a community; (4) the need for self-esteem flowing from prestige and social status; and (5) the need for self-actualization including being creative or accomplishing worthwhile purposes in life. Coming of age in prosperous and secure circumstances allows one to seek the higher needs instead of having to worry about social disruptions of terrorism or war, crime in one’s neighborhood, or where the next meal is to come from.
The notion of an empirical measure of postmaterialist values originates with Professor Inglehart whose work in the 1970’s sparked a wave of academic research that continues to this day. A 12-item index of postmaterialism is constructed from data obtained through surveys that ask about respondent social priorities. Suppose you attach high priorities to such social goals as (1) protecting freedom of speech, (2) giving people more say in important government decisions, (3) seeing that people have more say about how things are done at their jobs and in their communities, (4) trying to make our cities and countryside more beautiful, (5) progress toward a less impersonal and more humane society, and (6) progress toward a society in which ideas count more than money. Then you are a postmaterialist. Suppose instead you attach high priorities to such goals as (7) maintaining order in the nation, (8) fighting rising prices, (9) a high level of economic growth, (10) making sure this country has strong defense forces, (11) a stable economy, and (12) the fight against crime (World Values Survey Association, 2015). In this case you are a materialist. If your priorities are mixed you lay on a spectrum between.
Research by Inglehart and others infers that if you are in your twenties, you are more likely to be a postmaterialist than if you are in your seventies. If you are currently young, you probably grew up in a period of economic prosperity, and if you are older you most likely faced economic deprivations in your pre-adult years. In general, younger generations in Europe, America, and the prosperous Asian countries experienced secure economic conditions in their youth while older generations suffered material challenges when they were growing up. Because our basic values are formed by the time we reach adulthood, whether or not we face economic scarcity or social upheavals in our youth matters. As we age, our value orientations fluctuate to some extent with economic and social conditions according to research findings by Inglehart, but our basic outlook doesn't change much relative to other generations. The overall level of the postmaterialism index will fluctuate with economic and personal security conditions (period effects), but the negative relation between age and the index will remain (cohort effect) and each cohort will retain on average the index magnitude established in their youth. Those with materialist leanings in their youth keep them for life just as postmaterialists retain their basic values. Statistical support for the negative relationship between age and indices of postmaterial values can be found in research articles by Inglehart and others. The World Values Survey data set reports a calculated 12-item postmaterialism index constructed from three sets of respondent rankings of social priorities with two materialist and two postmaterialist options in each set. Respondents to the survey are asked for their highest and second highest social priority for each set, and the postmaterialism index is simply the sum of postmaterialist choices.
The hypothesis of a shift to postmaterialist values by younger generations is confirmed by the World Values Survey wave six data for the U.S. The average postmaterialism index for Millennials is 2.17 on a possible spectrum ranging from 0 to 5, but it is significantly lower for older generations whose mean index measures 1.88 (Note that for statistical reasons one of 6 first and second choice postmaterial options is excluded from the final index). Briefly put, younger generations express support for placing postmaterialist, other-oriented social goals above materialist self-oriented purposes to a greater extent than older generations. As younger generations replace older over time, support for postmaterial, other-oriented social goals will become more prevalent in the society at large.
Postmaterial values unsurprisingly turn out to be important in explaining expressions of environmental concern and participation in actions to protect the environment. Research findings support the hypothesis that individuals in the U.S., and the World as a whole, who possess postmaterial values are more prone to express concern for the environment and to engage in personal actions in support of the environment. Younger generations are more postmaterialist than older in both the U.S. and around the globe, and as younger generations replace older over time, support for the environment will increase. This is a source of environmental optimism, but unfortunately it operates only over the long-run. Doing something about climate change, the most threatening environmental problem we face today, requires action over a time frame that shortens daily.
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This brings us to the 2016 elections. Speculating about whether Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump in the presidential race is not particularly fruitful at this point, but we can take heart for the environment from some of the voting patterns. First, Millennial support for Sanders in the primaries was surprising and amazing. In my own state, Wisconsin, Sanders bested Clinton 56 percent to 43, and, according to exit polls, 18-29 year old Millennial voters went overwhelmingly for Sanders over Clinton 82 to 18 percent. Note that in this election white males without college degrees supported Sanders 59 percent to 41 percent. This is precisely the group that served as the backbone of support for Trump and helped cause Clinton’s loss of Wisconsin in the general election, one of the states the Democrats expected to win. Second, even though Millennials were not enthusiastic supporters of Hillary Clinton in the general election, those who voted supported her at a higher rate than any other age group. According to exit polls, 55 percent of 18-29 year olds voted for Clinton to 37 percent for Trump, and 50 percent of 30-44 year olds favored Clinton while 42 percent voted for Trump. Older age groups gave majority support to Trump and won him the election. Finally, Millennials are more liberal than older generations and more inclined to vote for Democratic presidential candidates as demonstrated by their strong support for Obama in the 2008 election. Data on self-expressed positioning on a left-right political scale from the World Values Survey lends support to the notion that Millennials favor a liberal political ideology. The scale ranges from 1 to 10 with 1 being most liberal and 10 most conservative. The average value of the score for Millennials is 5.59 and for older generations 5.84. Millennials fall to the left of older generations, and the difference is statistically significant.
I am no political strategist, but it looks to me like we need an anti-Trump political movement, one drive by the energy of youth, to both oppose his specific actions over the next four years and to defeat him in the next presidential election. This is our best hope for the environment, and for a host of other issues central to our social well being—universal health care, a living minimum wage, good jobs for all comers, universal access to a decent education, and more. I now think Bernie Sanders had the collection of ideas and proposals that garners support across red states and blue, and most importantly his ideas found an enthusiastic hearing among Millennials who now have an opportunity to take us all into a better future.
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