The spring 2015 Harvard Public Opinion Project found that young Americans are conflicted over the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and leaning against the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. However, their opinions on these two controversial environmental topics align more with environmentalist positions opposing both Keystone and fracking than with general public opinion.
On Keystone, a proposed pipeline project that would carry tar sands oil from Canada to existing pipelines running to the Gulf of Mexico, young Americans were just about evenly split. According to the poll, only 50 percent favored its construction while 48 percent opposed it. By contrast, a November 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found a majority of Americans in favor of Keystone by a larger margin of 59 percent to 31 percent, though this support showed a drop from Pew’s March 2013 survey, which found that 66 percent supported the Keystone proposal.
Meanwhile, young Americans also oppose fracking in greater proportions than does the general public. The HPOP poll found that 40 percent supported the use of fracking in America while 58 percent opposed it. Gallup’s March 2015 poll, which allowed respondents to claim neutrality on the issue, similarly found that 40 percent support fracking, but that the rest of the respondents were more split—just 40 percent opposed its use, while 19 percent had no opinion.
Energy and environment figure to play a prominent role in the 2016 campaign cycle. Climate policy has grabbed many headlines lately, from the ongoing legal challenges to the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on coal-fired power plant emissions to the precedent-setting U.S.-China climate agreements. It seems environmentalists who have long been agitating against the Keystone pipeline and fracking might then find some hope in young Americans’ differences in opinion from their older counterparts.
It seems unlikely, however, that climate issues will significantly sway the youth vote in the short term. Granted, other polls have documented that younger voters are more likely to believe climate science, that they are more likely than older voters to consider the environment a defining issue, and that they are more willing to reject politicians who reject climate science. Yet the HPOP poll’s unsurprising Democratic-GOP split on both questions suggest youth tend to vote with the party line on the environment. Add to this to the fact that even young Americans rank environment seventh and global warming 19th out of 23 priority issues (older Americans rank them 12th and 19th, respectively) and it seems that in the end, the youth vote will depend more heavily on other, more popular issues.