Most Americans Support Government Action On Climate Change

mdsolar points out this report in the NY Times: An overwhelming majority of the American public, including nearly half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans say they are more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They are less likely to vote for candidates who question or deny the science of human-caused global warming.

Among Republicans, 48 percent said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called "the most powerful finding" in the poll. Many Republican candidates either question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.

Comments

"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[NotDrWho]

Ask them what they willing to actually SACRIFICE to fix it and I bet you'll get a very different answer.

Re:"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[AqD]

Yes? I'm willing to sacrifice all others to fix it.

Re:"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[Bartles]

Yeah, and if you actually read the poll, you will see when specific items are listed (tax elecricity, gasoline, tax breaks for nuclear power) they oppose them 2 to 1. Another misleading Slashdot headline.

Re:"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[sumdumass]

lol.. What's the sacrifice you ask then say taking vehicles off the road as if it does not deprive anyone of anything. The problem is all the rest cost money. It costs more money than the current model. So when you raise prices, people will have less. This less means they will sacrifice something- whether it is savings, stability in electric power, a car or whatever. It will only make the world more expensive and people will have to do without. You make it sound like you can just speak it into existence and there is no repercussions. There are and there will be.

Re:"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[meglon]

Actually, liberals do want to pay for government programs... that's WHY democrats have a more favorable view of taxes; as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr said: "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

Conservatives, on the other hand, don't want to pay for government. They consistently enact policies and tax cuts that hamper, disrupt, and destroy the machinations of a civilized society, while shirking the responsibility to pay for government, and foisting it onto future generations.... usually all the while complaining that government doesn't work.

Increase taxes, fixing the corporate tax system, and making cuts to our massively bloated military are positions that liberals take, and conservatives hate. The problem isn't with liberals here, it's with conservatives that, once again, hate government.

As for your actual debt bullshit, which is what it is, you're citing a radical conservative who want's to do away with medicaid, medicare, and health exchanges, and replace them all with vouchers; supports requiring banks and financial institutions to all be changed so they have no liability for the financial vehicles they sell; and eliminate the entire tax structure and replace it with the most regressive form of taxation in the misnamed "fair tax" flat tax system, where the poorest people are the most heavily taxed.

What this individual does is hype the "debt they're keeping secret" by trying to get people who don't understand basic (VERY BASIC) accounting to think it's all some sort of conspiracy. It's not; he's preying on the ignorance of those he talks to, most of whom probably already hate the government, and filling their heads with bullshit. In the most basic terms, there's two types of accounting for money you'd decided to spend: as you spend it, or all of it at once when you decide to spend it. BOTH are legitimate accounting methods. In the US, we account for it as we spend it. What this guy is saying is that we should be accounting for ALL of it the second we decide to spend it.

Why we don't do it his way: As an example, in 1996 Lockheed and Boeing were given contracts to produce concepts that were the first phase of the F-35 program. That's 1.5 billion dollars. If we had to account for the total cost of the F-35 program, as in HAVE THAT MONEY IN THE BANK, we'd have needed almost a trillion dollars right from the get go. Every time that the program is re-assessed, it's cost goes up... that would mean that every time those 100's of billions it's projected cost went up, we'd have to come up with RIGHT THEN. Nothing would ever get done, nothing would ever get started, because while that project might get underway for a smaller amount every year for a decade, coming up with that entire decades cost before anything was even started, and packing it away never to be touched, would be a massive waste of resources.

If you don't think i'm right, go rent an apartment. Figure out how many years you're going to be living there, then pay ALL those monthly rental costs up front. Or how about your electric bill. Sit down, figure out how much electricity costs you this last year... now figure out how long you're going to be alive and pay the electric company for all that electricity you're gong to use in your lifetime RIGHT NOW. That is as absurd as what this Kotlikoff's schtick is.

The biggest generational theft ever to happen is the tax cuts conservatives have enacted over the last 35 years that have caused the national debt to explode.

Re:"Support" != actually sacrifice for

[thrich81]

This is going to sound harsher than intended, but ... from younger days I already have owned a couple of Trans-Ams, Corvettes, a factory 455 cubic inch Buick GS Stage 1, 69 Camaro with a L-88 engine swap, big block El Caminos, etc, all big blocks at least 400 CID and they are all crap compared to what you can get for about $30K now in a new (or much less used) Mustang, Camaro, or Challenger. The old cars weren't that fun to drive because no matter how much power the engines made (and it wasn't as much as everyone 'remembers'), the suspensions could not put the power to the road. If you really want to enjoy a ride, go buy a 2015 Mustang GT which will outrun any old muscle car and do it with full emissions equipment, safety equipment and air conditioning. By the way, if you want 500 HP, don't try it with a Pontiac 455 -- that long stroke motor was a POS -- if you have to do it the hard way with 1960's/70's tech, go with a 427/454 Chevrolet, even then the factory race engines(427-L88 and 427-ZL1) were only making about 550 horses with open headers. Oh and those mid-70's Trans-Ams couldn't take all that much horsepower anyway -- their crappy bodies with the partial subframes twisted all up under real torque, especially the T-Top cars. I was a huge muscle car guy and went through the 70's when "government regulations" killed the muscle car, but the cars now are supercars compared to the best from back then and you don't get a lungful of lead, hydrocarbons and CO from behind them. I'm convinced that this would not be the case had the government not forced the automakers to clean up. If cars can be this good and this clean now then there is no excuse for anything else to be dirty either.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most Americans support government action on labeling food products that contain DNA. These surveys are worthless.

nonpartisan environmental research group

[Nutria]

"Nonpartisan" means that Resources For The Future doesn't officially support the Democrat party. Everyone who works there, however, voted Green or for Obama.

IOW, it's effectively partisan.

Re:in one case, a search and replace update

[CaptainLard]

As you know, in these institutions updated there materials in the 1970s to early 1980s, from "OMG panic man-made ice age" to "OMG panic global warming"

Nice myth. The "ice age panic" was one story that made Time magazine at a time when the majority of climate research indicated a warming trend due to human cause CO2 emissions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
And about 1000 other sources if you google "1970 ice age"

I'm not going to try to convince you that AGW is a problem we should address (note I said "should be addressed", not panic over). Instead, are you afraid of something if those crazy scientists from your anecdotes get their way and the Fed institutes CO2 mitigation? Gas prices jump to $20/gallon? The government mandates CO2 trackers worn all the time? Economic disaster circa 2008?

I'll cite the elimination of lead in pretty much everything (no economic catastrophe) and the elimination of CFC's (no economic catastrophe). Also some fun facts on how we got to a point of not worrying about acid rain anymore:

"In 2007, total SO2 emissions were 8.9 million tons, achieving the program's long term goal ahead of the 2010 statutory deadline.[22]

The EPA estimates that by 2010, the overall costs of complying with the program for businesses and consumers will be $1 billion to $2 billion a year, only one fourth of what was originally predicted"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

So tell my why addressing CO2 emissions is a bad idea (not that you explicitly stated as much in your comments)