It's Hip to Be Green

Just before the first amplified chords of Guster's hit single "Satellite" filled the hall, lead singer Ryan Miller stepped up to the mike. Instead of belting out a song or urging the audience to buy the band's latest CD, he encouraged them to pick up a free pamphlet on the environment. "I don't want to get all preachy," said the slight, scraggly-bearded musician, 34, "but if one out of 10 of you did it, it would make a difference." Then it was back to the music.

For the last year and a half, Guster, a popular indie rock band, has been on a mission to spread green wisdom to its fans along with its music. On each of their stops, band members invite their audiences—mostly undergrads who turn out for their Campus Consciousness Tour—into their bus, where they tout the benefits of biodiesel, show off their biodegradable tableware (made from corn and potatoes), explain that they use only rechargeable batteries onstage and soy ink in their liner notes, and urge fans to buy carbon credits to offset their car rides to the concert. "We don't want to be soapboxy, because that could backfire," says guitarist and vocalist Adam Gardner. "But it's something we just want to make available to people. And if they're not interested, then here's the next song."

There's no question that young people have woken up to the realities of global warming. A new poll from Gallup shows that 44 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 believe we need to take "immediate, drastic" action on the environment, compared with 38 percent of those between the ages of 35 and 54, and 33 percent of those 55 and older. A higher percentage of young people also say they understand global warming well and believe it results from human activities as opposed to natural changes in the environment. "We're on the verge of a sea change in young people's engagement with climate and other environmental issues," says James Gustave Speth, dean of Yale University's School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. "I'm predicting a groundswell that will become a major force in politics."

Those too young to remember the legislative victories of the 1970s, like the creation of the EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, have come of age in a world where recycling, organic food and annual Earth Days are a given. But they may also be the first generation to feel the effects of climate change so dramatically, from 70-degree winter days in the Northeast to the Christmas 2004 tsunami to Hurricane Katrina. Those events, combined with a sense of a lack of leadership in Washington on environmental issues, have galvanized young people. Many say global warming has become the campus cause of the decade, picking up where Vietnam, apartheid and AIDS awareness left off in the '70s, '80s and '90s. "There is a deep misconception about our generation and what drives us," says Jared Duval, 23, national director of the Sierra Student Coalition, the national student chapter of the Sierra Club. "So many people assume that we are apathetic because we aren't spending all of our time on antiwar marches the way our parents' generation did. That is not the result of apathy, it is the result of foresight."

Reared on MTV, YouTube and celebrity magazines, young people are attacking the environmental movement with a different strategy than those who became politically active in the 1970s. Speth says the approach is a more subtle one. Some call it "light green." Rather than boycotting companies and organizing violent demonstrations, many activists are marshaling savvy marketing and technology skills in order to attract a wider, more diverse group of people to the cause. "We're hopefully trying to move the conversation into the mainstream," says Lauren Sullivan, who, with her husband, Guster's Gardner, founded Reverb, an organization that helps musicians like Sheryl Crow and Barenaked Ladies make their tours more green. The group sets up tents before each show, where audiences can meet representatives from local environmental groups and sample organic products.

Changing the stodgy image of the environmental movement is at the heart of what many young activists are trying to do. Danny Seo, 29, is a pioneer in the field of eco-living. Born on Earth Day, he started his first environmental organization at 12 and then worked as an environmental lobbyist in Washington during his college years. But he had a twin passion for design and home improvement, and chose that path instead. Now a noted eco-lifestyle expert and author of a popular series of books on environmentally friendly décor and entertaining called "Simply Green," he says he doesn't regret taking the softer road. "On the surface, it may seem silly to be focused on colors and fabrics and doing a gift-wrapping book, but there is a meaning. For a long time I think people have been saying you gotta go green because it's good for you, because it's good for the planet. But no one wants to do that for that reason alone. You have to make it affordable and stylish and exciting, because at the end of the day, that's what good marketing is."