I'd question the conclusion here.
The way it reads to me, they were asked to rank what is most important to them. What they're saying is that 4% mentioned the enviroment as the most important thing to them, which is bloody huge since we're talking a priority list. What's more we don't know what else was on that list, and how it was presented. Not to mention how high the key issue (the enviroment) ranked after video games or whatever.
That said, I don't dislike the enviroment, but I tend to take a "humans first" attitude. Strictly speaking while the planet might eventually wind up looking like Trantor (from Asimov's books) we'll survive and probably have a decent standard of living. One of the reasons why I push for a world unity irregardless of the cost in human lives (if it comes to that, mostly I think it will happen from ideas) is the need for humans to expand our population to other planets and obtain more resources. The faster it happens, and the faster we colonize other planets, the less likely that we're going to cover our planet in a giant, endless, urban metroplex.
Not to mention of course the fact that for kids, and anyone else, the issue is fundementally unaddressable. I mean even if we somehow achieved 100% recyclying, we're still going to damage the enviroment due to the rate our population expands. What's more some of the technologies people suggest we go without are used for good reason. For all the beautiful pictures of wildlife, and sickening pictures of industial wastelands and such, you'll notice they never really show a bunch of people slowly freezing or starving to death, or slowly dying in a hospital because enviromental concerns have mandated we can't save him, or even work on the technology to do so.
Kids become smarter every generation, and to some extent I think ironic detachment "I'd rather play video games" might be a factor. For all the "you can save the enviroment" junk, it's really too big an issue, and morally ambigious. "Let's Protect The Rainforest!", okay that's great, except the people living around that Rainforest are a bunch of poor dirtfarmers who have nothing except a plentiful supply of wood, which they sell so they can have resources to live on and food to eat. You aren't going to talk them into all starving to death in the mud, and dying from sickness because of the rights of all those beautiful animals... so to stop them, you'd basically have to walk in and kill them and the contractors.
When you really think about this stuff, and I think kids can be smarter than we give them credit for (even if they don't think of that example), it's kind of ridiculous. Okay, fine, using the recycle bins and knowing what goes into which one is not a bad thing. Alternative energy is a nice idea down the road, assuming of course we can both deconstruct our current power grid, and build a new one without causing massive devestation to the population... call it 'drawing board material'. Ridiculous sentiments are recognized for what they are, for example the MMO that encouraged kids to run around unplugging power strips and messing with people's unattended laptops:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/mmo-roulette/powerup.php
That's real incidently.
So basically, while superficially it might seem "video games are more important" is wrong, I can't help but wonder if that's less disturbing that it might at first appear. I mean consider the retardation that was "Captain Planet" and it's take on the issue. There is a point at which someone might just say "I'll sit here and play my video games, and not ruin the enviroment any more than that entails. You guys go save the enviroment without me, and oh hey... while your out with PETA don't forget the noseplugs, I heard beached whales actually stink really bad up close".
