Putting the "-ist" in "environmentalist"

Keith Kloor thinks environmental organizations are struggling to stay relevant. Christopher Ingraham says "the green movement has a Millennial problem." The eco-Millennial is "a myth," says Derek Thompson: "Millennials don't give a hoot about the environment."

They're all talking about this big Pew study on Millennials that came out last week. Among other things, it found that Millennials are the most likely age cohort to self-identity as "a supporter of gay rights" but the least likely to self-identiy as "a patriotic person," "a religious person," or "an environmentalist" (see chart).

Ingraham allows that Millennials do care about some environmental issues, but "they don’t identify strongly with environmentalism as a whole"—unlike gay rights. Samantha Larson explains that her generation's greenness is more pragmatic than doctrinaire. Eli Rabett points out that strong Millennial support for environmental issues (which Pew reported in 2011) combined with weak support for the word "environmentalist" sure beats the opposite.