Arguing that next month’s election will have greater ramifications for young voters, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz urged students at Duke University on Thursday to vote — and campaign — for Kamala Harris for president, his running mate.

“Right now, you're not talking about the next four years,” the Minnesota governor said on the Durham, North Carolina, campus. “You're talking about the next 40 years.”

Walz listed a range of issues he said should be important to young voters, including abortion rights, jobs, home buying and climate changes.

He accused Republicans of ignoring climate change and told the students not to allow GOP candidates to pander to them to win their votes.

“The reason you're here is, you're not going to let some old people who are going to be dead long before climate change does the destruction that it's going to be; you need to take charge of it,” Walz said.

Walz also pleaded for young Americans to not sit on the sidelines politically. 

“I know you run into your friends who say: ‘Ah, I'm sick of it. I'm just not that into politics.’ Too damn bad. Politics is into you. It's into you. Literally, women's lives are at risk because of the policies they're putting in place,” he said, referring to abortion restrictions put in place in some states following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Walz also attacked former President Donald Trump, saying “in my 60 damn years, I didn't think I'd ever see a candidate for president praising Adolf Hitler's generals or talking about using the military against their enemies.”

He was referring to reports this week in The New York Times and The Atlantic that Trump privately told people when he was president he wished he had loyal generals like Hitler had, as well as the former president’s comments in a recent TV interview “calling for the National Guard or U.S. military to be deployed on Election Day to handle “the enemy from within.”

“Look, I recognize I'm on the top of his list, but don't kid yourself, you're somewhere on that list, too, if you disagree with these people,” he said. “That's who they are.”

He noted that Trump has been on the national political scene since the college students were in elementary or middle school.

“There are so many reasons to beat this guy, but one of them — it might be petty, but I'm going to own it — I just don't want to look at him anymore on TV,” Walz said.

“Because it's all about him,” he continued. “It's all about what he wants. It's all about what he says. That's not what this is about. You all learned this here. It's about servant leadership. It's about helping others. It's about contributing to your society. It's about doing the right things.

“They are going to write about Americans who stood up in this moment and said ‘hell no’ to this, the tendencies of totalitarianism and the division and the racism, the hatred, the misogyny, everything else that goes with that. You're going to get asked when you're my age, ‘What did you do?’, and your answer is, ‘I did every damn thing possible to win that election.’”

The Minnesota governor said that while the Trump campaign runs divisive ads that demonize people and spreads lies about legal immigrants, each of the students should speak to somebody, “encouraging people to their better angels, including them for an optimistic future, encouraging them for a better way forward.”

“Twelve days to choose dignity and integrity and kindness over hate,” he said.

Walz said the “election will run right through North Carolina” and predicted if Harris wins the Tar Heel state, she will win the election. 

The vice presidential candidate was spending the day campaigning in the battleground state of North Carolina, with stops also planned in Greenville and Wilmington. Walz is set to be joined in Wilmington by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Taylor, who will perform at the rally as part of the Harris campaign's "When We Vote We Win" concert series. Walz will urge North Carolinians to cast their ballots early and add to the state's record-breaking early voting numbers.

Polls by Emerson College and Marist College this week each showed Trump with a lead of 2 percentage points over Harris in North Carolina, both within the margins of error.