According to a new poll by Youthography, America's youth consider being environmentally friendly a top priority. Sixty-percent believe the government should be doing more to protect the environment, and seventy-five-percent believe the world will be more polluted in twenty-five years. However, the poll also reveals that this concern doesn't always translate into action.

MTV has been trying to change that. With a year long campaign launched last Earth Day called Break The Addiction, MTV set out to educate their viewers about environmental issues and empower them to create change. I recently talked with Ian Rowe, Vice President of Public Affairs and Strategic Partnerships at MTV, about their campaign, youth involvement in the environment and the special green edition of MTV's car makeover show, Pimp My Ride.

Green Options: How did the Break the Addiction campaign begin?

Ian Rowe: A year ago, April 22, 2006, we launched our Break the Addiction campaign to educate our audience about the issues related to global warming and to make it relevant to their daily lives. For most of our audience when they had historically heard about global warming it was in the context of polar bears suffering because of melting ice, which is a terrible thing but on a day to day basis young people weren't really seeing how it connected to their day to day life.

So we saw an opportunity to really help educate our audience about these issues, show how they're all connected and that daily behaviors could have an impact on all of these things. In the Break the Addiction campaign we present a new daily tip on air, online, and on wireless devices of a simple thing that every young person can do that will improve their life and then simultaneously, positively impact the environment.

GO: What has the response been regarding the campaign?

IR: Historically, the environment has not really rated that high with our audience. It was one of the reasons we actually wanted to launch the campaign because we knew global warming, issues of energy independence, and climate change were going to be big items on the agenda. After we launched the campaign we decided to do a major survey to see what the impact had been.

While Al Gore's efforts have definitely helped shape public opinion, when we did our poll in June of last year, for the first time ever young people rated the environment as the number one issue that their generation will face. Eight in ten said that the time to act on global warming is right now. We had never seen numbers like that at all. That's important for us because before we ever see major changes in behavior we first have to start seeing major changes in attitude. So that was great evidence for us that there has been a very good response.

GO: The Break the Addiction Campaign only lasts for one year though. What happens after Earth Day 2007?

IR: There's no question that we'll continue especially given the level of importance that climate change, global warming, energy independence have now taken on and certainly will through the presidential election. So we will continue to look for ways that MTV can engage our audience around this issue.

GO: How does Pimp My Ride fit in to all of this?

IR: As part of the campaign we wanted to use our biggest platform to reinforce that message and certainly Pimp My Ride is one of those. We had a young person who was willing to have their '65 Chevy Impala car pimped out. We put a 800-horsepower engine in it, converted it to biodiesel, put it on a race track against a performance sports car. We beat that car, which just shows that you don't have to sacrifice performance at all in order to be eco-friendly.

GO: How did the Governator get involved?

IR: We've worked with Governor Schwarzenegger before. Since we launched Break the Addiction we've been trying to find ways to work together, especially knowing his leadership in bringing California to address these issues. Once we were doing this Pimp My Ride in California it made sense to approach the governors office and it worked out really well.

GO: Is this the only green Pimp My Ride so far?

IR: It is, although we are looking for ways, not only in Pimp My Ride, but in other shows too where we can also incorporate a green message.

GO: It sounds like MTV is really trying to engage its audience - and it seems to be working.

IR: We are heartened by young people's response. The issues resonate with them because we're talking about how these issues can be addressed in a very pragmatic way every single day. And I think it's a hallmark of how we typically engage young people. We speak in a language that resonates with them around issues that they say they care about.

The special Pimp My Ride episode airs Sunday, April 22 at 1p ET, plus special green episodes of TRL (featuring Break the Addiction Challenge winners) and MTV News (with an interview with Gov Schwartzenegger) will air on Monday, April 23.
For more information about MTV's break the addiction campaign check out think.MTV.com.