Poll: 75% of Americans Want More Federal Action on Global Warming

Environment News Service
Poll: 75% of Americans Want More Federal Action on Global Warming

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2006/2006-03-15-04.asp

NEWTON CENTRE, Massachusetts, March 15, 2006 (ENS) - A majority of Americans of all political beliefs are dissatisfied with what they perceive as weak federal leadership on global warming and energy issues, according to a public opinion poll released today. At the same time they support the growing number of state and local efforts to rein in climate change problems and to tap alternative fuel sources, the poll found.

The national survey was conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation on behalf of the Massachusetts based nonprofit and nonpartisan think tank Civil Society Institute (CSI) and 40MPG.org, which is a project of the CSI think tank.

The survey found that about three out of five Americans (58 percent) are more concerned about global warming today than they were two years ago – including 76 percent of liberals and 57 percent of independents, but only 42 percent of conservatives.

Only about three in 10 Americans (29 percent) say there is "no change" in their view about global warming.

imagine that. :sarcasm:

.. 75% voted for this travesty of a government?

Rage... that's all this kind of hypocrisy brings out in me.

Kicked and recommended.

:kick:

The biggest thing any individual can do is conserve energy and only buy what you need. Use fluorescent bulbs in your home. When you buy a home, buy a smaller one that still fits your needs (who needs a 4000-sq. ft, 5 bedroom, 4 bathroom home for a family of 3?) Turn down the thermostat to 60-65F and wear sweaters. Drive 55-60 mph instead of 80 mph on the highway. The myth that today's vehicles have engines that are tuned to operate more efficiently at 70 mph is just that, a myth. Your wind resistance doubles when you go from 50 mph to 70 mph, and no amount of engine tuning can change that.

Most of all, DON'T BUY SUV'S FOR COMMUTING TO WORK!!! If you live in the country and have to drive through mud and snow, or need to haul heavy objects often for work, buy a truck or SUV to fit your needs. But if you're a soccer mom driving the kids to school and commuting to work in the city, just buy a car or, gasp, a station wagon.

What this survey found is basically that people want the federal government to find some techo-savvy plan to stop global warming, but we Americans don't want to change our lifestyles to make that change. They expect some scientist somewhere working in a federally funded lab to perfect cold fusion or 99% efficiency solar cells or some such miracle, so they can drive their SUV's and live in their 80F homes in the middle of wintery Minnesota guilt-free.

We have an economy that is forcing people to move to the coasts to huge mega slurbs where they must drive everywhere. Look around you. The typical American spends his or her life driving around an ugly landscape based on auto transport. How do we get back to an economy that lets us get out of our cars and live like real people again?

Working to design livable communities should be a high priority, and that is something that local and state governments should be working on more. The federal government can assist in this by providing funding, but the states and cities have to get the proposals sent out in the first place. Where the federal government can really shine is by implementing nationwide revitalization of the rail lines, increasing CAFE standards for all vehicles, and pressuring US automakers to ramp up production of fuel-efficient cars and hybrids.

Until then, all we can do to get to work if we live in the suburbs is to commute with the most fuel-efficient vehicles possible.

... where people walk around their neighborhoods on a daily basis, getting good cardio vascular exercise, getting to interact with their neighbors, supporting local businesses, reducing traffic and improving air quality all at the same time.

Here, we want to drive a truck big enough to land an F-18 on up to the doors of a Mal-Wart and shovel in enough stuff to last us for a month so we won't have to leave our televisions for a second longer than necessary.

the leaders will follow.

except give away the store to the wealthy and piss on the poor and fuck the middle class?

Yet the freepers will you that he's doing a good job. When I'm told that one out five person are mentally deranged. I now believe it!

No wonder the world hates us.

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They'll get rugged SUV commercials and heavily pimped E85 vehicles from GM (which will use the estimated 600-odd E85 pumps in existence nationwide, one presumes) and they're going to get 250,000-gallon crude oil spills at Prudhoe Bay.

They'll get senators and representatives and presidents and other political "leaders" who slop green paint across the Same Old Shit every April and flaunt their environmental "sensitivities" and who then keep on doing the Same Old Shit the other 360 days of the year.

They'll get exciting new pilot program demonstration project FutureGen zero-emissions congressional pork thermal power stations which will be online sometime around, oh, 2012 or so and when finally online (assuming they work) will sequester a whole whopping 10 or 15 thousand tons of carbon per year, while in the intervening six years human activity will have placed another 55 BILLION tons or so of atmospheric carbon in play in a rapidly destabilizing climate that is quickly becoming the world's largest solar-powered pinball machine as positive feedback loops take matters entirely out of our hands.

Most of all, they'll get a thousand and one soothing brands of greenwashy camouflage to help them forget about all the shit they do themselves: the fat-ass Testosterone Shitwagons they drive tens of thousands of miles every year, the 6,500 square foot homes they heat and cool with industrial-strength HVAC systems, the giant plasma-screen home theaters that suck more juice than a 1st-grade field trip armed with box lunches and whatever else it takes them to forget what a shitty degraded husk of a civilization and a parched, lightning-split shell of a world they'll be handing to their kids.

nt