My generation (I’m 19) has been getting a lot of flack these days. We are resistant to entering the “real world”, hesitant to settle down, and spend way too much time on “the internets”. Are we simply unmotivated, or is there logic to our laziness?

Where some see our so called “prolonged childhood” as nothing but a bad thing, I see smart (if tradition-breaking) adaptation to our changing world.

The economic crisis means that we’ve seen first hand that jobs once considered safe bets are now anything but. So maybe instead of entering the workforce, we’ll spend a few more years in grad school. Maybe instead of finding our own place just for the sake of it, we’ll spend a few more years living with our parents. (Speaking of parents, 50% of ours got a divorce. With statistics like that, why wouldn’t we be afraid to marry?)

And how does this play into energy efficiency? Much as the economic crisis and disheartening marriage statistics have changed the way we think about future jobs and relationships, I think the oil spill will prove to be a turning point in how we “echo boomers” think about energy.

Our collective reaction to the oil spill will take time to evolve. But in the meantime, perhaps it is breaking us from our hypocrisy. We use a ton of energy (I type, guiltily unplugging my already fully charged laptop ...), but we also seem to care, at least on paper. Remember when everyone got excited last November when we all voted? Well, turns out a big reason we did so was because of the environment.

“Fully 64 percent of these young voters said the environment was ‘very important’ to their vote, compared with 55 percent of older voters, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in October,” says a Washington Independent article.

Just a glance at any of our favorite social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, or blog sites like Tumblr, proves how interested -- at least superficially, and hopefully seriously -- we are in the spill. And in figuring out ways to right this very big wrong.

Even before the spill, we were touted as the generation that would demand energy-efficient homes, and some statistics show we’ll even pay more for them. That is, if we ever get our acts together and buy them - and that could take some time. Because we’re so hesitant to join the workforce, we don’t have nearly as much money as our parents’ generation did when entering the home-buying market, which means that even if we are looking for a home to buy, finances will be an issue - and some of us aren’t looking at all. Just as we learned and adapted from divorce rates and the economy, we saw the mortgage crisis unfold before our eyes - and we’re not interested in getting involved with a broken system. The demand for houses is just not there right now.

The rest of the country, however, is waiting for us to take the plunge into home ownership, because when we are ready, we’ll be the ones to revitalize the housing market. And when we are ready, there will be a lot of us - which means we’ll need new housing. And the new housing that we need? Chances are really good that homes will be much smaller, and much more energy efficient than the homes our parents wanted when they were first starting out. Luckily, some statistics are showing that slowly but surely, we’re entering the market - but for the most part, we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, the places where we’re living now are getting more and more energy efficient. College campuses are getting greener, (thanks in great part to efforts like America’s Greenest Campus contest), and even those of us still living at home can make a difference. I, for one, yell a line derived from NBC’s show “30 Rock”, whenever my 17-year-old brother spends too long in front of the open refrigerator: “Decide what you want before you open the refrigerator. You just released enough hydrofluorocarbons to kill a penguin. This penguin!” Well, at least it’s a start...