Anecdotal, but I've been in or around a lot of different radical orgs over the years, and the core members tend to be over-educated downwardly-mobile, semi-proletarianized, precarious semi-professionals. Like adjunct professors or lab techs or anything-medical-tech or semi-permanent substitute teachers or etc. All these positions that either didn't exist, or used to be much better, before neoliberalism. Just existing in that social layer really makes you deeply hostile to the entire system.

So yeah I guess my advice to young people is go ahead and get that PhD in environmental science you're considering, and then work at the local water department for a few years until they sell the whole thing to Nestle or whatever, and then just see where your politics land.