Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer is targeting millennials as the best hope to get a Democrat elected to the White House.
“This is really about turnout and letting the millennial voice be heard,” Steyer said on a call with reporters on Monday. “We’re determined they will be a difference maker” in 2016 elections, he said.
Steyer’s group, NextGen Climate, will be starting a new 2016 election campaign on more than 200 college campuses in seven key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Illinois and Colorado in the coming weeks.
Steyer said the issue of climate change and transitioning the nation from fossil energy to more solar and wind is a key motivator for the millennial generation, represented by those born between 1980 and 2004.
He said they “prefer candidates that support renewable projects,” which underscores the core mission of his group to get politicians elected who will support policies to combat climate change. Many scientists blame fossil fuels for causing the Earth’s climate to warm, resulting in more severe weather, sea-level rise, drought and flooding.
“Young voters are our best hope for solving the climate crisis,” Steyer said. “That’s why I’m so excited to support the next generation in making sure their voices resonate at the ballot box.”
Steyer says the latest climate studies suggest climate change has affected the environment at a faster rate than scientists had thought, making it more urgent that candidates with ideas to address the climate crisis win in 2016.
“Changes in the natural world are happening faster than the scientists predicted,” Steyer said. “Attention is going to be increasingly paid to accelerating the move to clean energy” and phasing out reliance on fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.
Steyer’s campaign comes just days after more than 170 countries signed a climate change deal reached in December. The Obama administration has made the deal a key feature of the president’s last year in office, and Democrats support the agreement as the direction the U.S. needs to be heading.
