Survey: US Voters Divided on Need to Take Immediate Action on Climate Change
07 February 2009
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that US voters are evenly divided over whether there’s an immediate need to take action on climate change. Forty-one percent (41%) believe there is, but the same number (41%) say we can wait a few years to see if the problem is real.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats say we must take immediate action, but 64% of GOP voters say it’s all right to wait a few years. A plurality of unaffiliated voters give the edge to waiting.
Other results from the survey include:
64% say global warming is a serious problem, down slightly from a survey last April. But voters increasingly regard it as the product of long-term planetary trends rather than human activity.
23% say it is at least somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century. 5% say it’s very likely.
46% believe giving government greater control over the economy to fight global warming will be bad for America. Just 35% believe it will be good for the country. 20% are not sure.
29% of all voters think a period of dangerous global warming is the most likely climate expectation. 5% predict a dangerous ice age but most (52%) expect something in between. Most Democrats expect a period of dangerous global warming while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters expect something between the two extremes.
45% of voters say there is conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.
Republicans and unaffiliated voters strongly reject the notion that global warming will end human civilization, but Democrats are more evenly divided—38% think that disastrous outcome is likely while 46% disagree.
Former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-global warming efforts, but just 36% of voters believe he knows what he’s talking about.
The national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports 31 January - 1 February 2009. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
I think an interesting question to ask is: what negative results/benefits do they believe come from transforming culture for climate change? Why would a society not pursue it? A transformation completely dedicated to optimization, planning, and gathering data can't really have much that conflicts with reasonable, modern economic goals, can it?
Posted by: Jer | 07 February 2009 at 06:43 AM
This is always a very interesting issue because both sides make good points. Hopefully Congress will actually choose to open up a discussion about this. Now that they seem to have come to some sort of agreement on the stimulus package, they should be able to move on to issues like this.
I saw that the Friends of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is asking people to give their opinion on the most important thing for Congress to do next. Then they are going to focus their efforts on getting Congress to accomplish what we actually want them to do.
What do you think Congress should do? Should they allocate research money to try to find ways to slow global warming? Or should they focus their efforts on completely different areas? Make sure to add your opinion so Congress can know what we want them to do next - http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/email/email4.cfm?id=200
Posted by: JJ | 07 February 2009 at 01:07 PM