Will Early Iowa Primaries Undermine the Green Vote?

This year’s Iowa caucus, the first date in the 2008 Presidential courtship, is set to fall on Jan. 3 — during the winter break of most colleges and universities. Considering political youth participation incubates best on college campuses, one might wonder how the break will affect candidate priorities, especially with regard to the environment, a top concern for Generation Y.

Given the recent explosion of the green movement, conventional wisdom holds that young people, as a whole, care as much or more about the environment than their parents and grandparents. Likewise, last weekend’s Step It Up Campaign heralded youth-driven environmental angst as thousands of college-aged students convened in Washington, DC, to demand that national political leaders support key global warming initiatives. The event emerged out of Middlebury College and was propelled by Campus Climate Challenge, a widely popular grassroots movement across American universities.

One hopes that candidates won’t completely focus exclusively on the concerns of those caucus-goers at hand, at the expense of global warming and other issues important to the college vote.

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