Last week an article came out in the Huffington Post that really perplexed me. It claimed that, although college-aged kids have a reputation for being eco-minded, their actions suggest otherwise. What really shocked me was that although American “Millennials” have grown up among conversations about how our climate is changing and how it is up to us to help stop this while we can, we’re just not as interested in helping the environment as our parents generation.

Why is this so? According to psychologist and author Jean Twenge, recent studies have shown that the trust young people have in others has declined, they’re less interested and impressed with the government and the time spent thinking about social problems and what they can do to help them has decreased. The study goes on to say that 15% of Millennials said they have made no effort whatsoever to help the environment, that only 21% of Millennials have been personally involved with programs to clean up the environment and that only 56% of Millennials have cut back on energy use.  As a young person myself (I graduated from college last May), I was confused and saddened by this general claim, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

While perhaps it is true that environmentalism is on the decline for a small segment of students, the Energy Action Coalition, a coalition of over 50 youth-led environmental action and social justice groups, released a report claiming that the exact opposite phenomena is happening: there are findings that youth are actually more involved with the environmental movement than ever before.  According to Energy Action Coalition’s Executive Director Maura Cowley in reference to Dr. Twenge’s report: “It’s methodology is flawed and it undermines the 10,000 students who came to Washington, DC in April 2011 for the Power Shift conference, the largest organizer training in American history, the 400,000 young people who pledged to vote on climate, energy and environmental issues in our 2008 Power Vote campaign, and the thousands of youth voters who joined the wider community to surround the White House this past November to urge President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

Woah, that’s a lot of young people. And that’s just through one group. ACE has reached 1,163,175 students with our award-winning multimedia assembly on climate science and solutions and has 16,938 Action Team members taking on climate-cutting projects. Plus, last year the Pew Research Center found that Millennials are actually more likely than older generations to believe in climate change and support clean energy and other initiatives.  For a full list of research that rebuts Dr. Twenge’s findings check out this blog from We Are Powershift.

So, who’s right in this debate? Right now, it’s unclear. But for the time being, let’s work together as young people and continue to do our part to help combat change.