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KPBS Midday Edition

Sunrise Movement Youth Organizing To Stop U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Young activists with the Sunrise Movement fill the halls of Congress to lobby for a Green New Deal in an undated photo
courtesy of Sunrise Movement
Young activists with the Sunrise Movement fill the halls of Congress to lobby for a Green New Deal in an undated photo
Sunrise Movement Youth Organizing To Stop U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions
GUEST: Lauren Maunus, deputy political coordinator, Sunrise Movement Subscribe to the Midday Edition podcast on iTunes, Google Play or your favorite podcatcher.

They call themselves the Sunrise Movement. Cynics might dismiss them as hopelessly idealistic. A gaggle of environmentally minded twenty-somethings with little understanding of how the political world works. Their key cause is nothing less than the survival of all living things on this planet. To achieve it, they demand a halt in the use of fossil fuels in the next decade or so.

Except that maybe they aren’t so idealistic. A survey published Tuesday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication finds a record 73 percent of Americans believe climate change is happening.

Thanks in part to the efforts by the Sunrise Movement, young voters surged to the polls for the midterm elections. They backed Democrats by more than a 2-to-1 margin and helped flip the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Lauren Maunus, the Sunrise Movement's deputy political coordinator, joins Midday Edition Tuesday with more on the group's mission.