Two-Thirds of Americans Give Priority To Developing Alternative Energy Over Fossil Fuels (pewresearch.org)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Pew Research Center: A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources, compared with 27% who would emphasize expanded production of fossil fuel sources. Support for concentrating on alternative energy is up slightly since December 2014. At that time, 60% said developing alternative energy sources was the more important priority. There continue to be wide political differences on energy priorities. While a 2016 Pew Research Center survey found large majorities of Democrats and Republicans supported expanding both wind and solar energy, the new survey shows that Democrats remain far more likely than Republicans to stress that developing alternative energy should take priority over developing fossil fuel sources. About eight-in-ten (81%) Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party favor developing alternative sources instead of expanding production from fossil fuel sources. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are closely divided: 45% say the more important priority should be developing alternative sources, while 44% say expanding production of oil, coal and natural gas should be given more priority. There also are differences in public priorities about energy by age. Americans under the age of 50 are especially likely to support alternative energy sources over expanding fossil fuels. About seven-in-ten (73%) of those ages 18 to 49 say developing alternative sources of energy should be the more important priority, while 22% say expanding production of fossil fuels should be the more important priority. Older adults are more divided in their views, though they also give more priority to alternatives. Among those 50 and older, 55% say alternative energy development is more important, while 34% say it's more important to expand production of fossil fuel energy sources.

Comments

Contrast this with the incoming administration

[JoshuaZ]

Contrast this with the incoming administration which wants to favor fossil fuels above pretty much all else https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/us/politics/donald-trump-global-warming-energy-policy.html, http://www.nature.com/news/trump-s-next-move-scientists-struggle-with-foggy-future-1.21339.

Re:Contrast this with the incoming administration

[sit1963nz]

Well you have to understand, when it comes to voters Franklin has more votes than Grant who has more votes than Jackson who has more votes than Hamilton who has more votes than Lincoln who has more votes than Washington who has more votes than the people who did not contribute to election funds sufficiently for anyone (Read Trump) to care. You have to understand there are REAL Americans (the wealthy) and there are american voters (those that can be exploited by the wealthy)

Re:Contrast this with the incoming administration

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Fossil fuels and alternative energy are rather passe. What we really need is ambient, decentralized energy solutions.

Re:Contrast this with the incoming administration

[Mashiki]

Not so much considering who owns most of the stock on those oil companies.

Teachers unions and pension companies(divisions)? Because that's who owns most of those stocks in those companies.

Re:Contrast this with the incoming administration

[Mashiki]

Guess you can tell that to the people who are paying $700/mo for electricity and their kids are bundled up in coats because they can't afford the electricity to heat right? You're basically saying "fuck the poor, it's their own fault that they have electric heat." You really have no scope or scale of size of just how big Canada is and how much colder it gets here. So let's compare with say Germany, where your average winter temperature is 3C or UK? 5C. Where the average winter temperature in Ontario is -4C(the southern part), the northern part hit a balmy -10C...on average. Or how about Alberta? -12C still nice and warm right? That's not going to have an impact. How about when it hits -40C still good?

Depends who pays

[ShanghaiBill]

The majority of Americans will support anything as long as someone else pays for it. If you ask them if they are willing to pay an extra 5 cents per gallon of gas to pay for alternative energy, of course they will say no.

Re:Depends who pays

[david_bonn]

It's not economical when you take out the subsidies for solar/wind and the targeted overbearing rules that drive up the price of coal.
Put a number on pollution - all pollution including manufacturing those solar cells, not just local burning gas - then we'll talk.
Expensive Green = Brown

... and of course fossil fuels are never, ever subsidized?

But renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels

[WillAffleckUW]

How much business sense does it make to invest in cheaper and cleaner energy instead of expensive tax-subsidized pollution-heavy energy that can't exist without taxpayer subsidized mining leases on public lands and non-accounting of pollution costs?

I mean Big Government demands we do the worst possible most expensive fossil fuel version!

If we don't Fill The Swamp with massive tax subsidies for old Soviet-style fossil fuels, we might become independent of the Middle East!

And then what excuse will we have to start foreign wars to make billionaires richer at the cost of American blood and treasure?

Captain, that's illogical

[presidenteloco]

"65% of Americans give priority to developing alternative energy sources"

Too bad those 65% don't vote for what they want, apparently.

Re:Captain, that's illogical

[CanadianMacFan]

The problem, and not just in the US, is that you end up with a couple choices in which you have to make the best decision from. When you make your vote you are picking the person or party that best represents* their views on the issues. But no candidate will perfectly reflect what the voter wishes so there will always be some compromises. Unfortunately the source of electricity generation tends to come lower down on the list of priorities and won't prevent a candidate from being elected.

I'd like to see a set of referendum type questions that would guide the elected government no matter who won. I don't know how it would be enforced. There would be questions like
- What should the focus of the government be (Job growth, debt reduction, ...)
- Should the government run a deficit? (No, Small 2%, Med 5%)
- Where should new electricity be generated (Fossil fuels, Nuclear, Wind & Solar, ...)

* - I'm talking about a person that has researched the issues and not one that just votes for a party because they always have or their family always has.

I like alternative energy

[presidenteloco]

but you apparently prefer "alternative facts", which, as Merriam-Webster corp. tweeted today, are not, you know, actually, facts.

Just as one easy counter-example, you can build a solar-panel-building factory in the sahara desert, converting local sand into silicon solar panels, using nothing but the energy from the sun to power the factory and the construction vehicles, after a short initial pre-sustainable bootstrapping period.

Also, the environmental cost of just shipping fossil fuels from producing country to consuming country currently dwarfs all of those environmental costs you mention, and that doesn't even count the environmental costs of burning said fossil fuels.

So one has to question the motivation behind your remarks. Are you a driver of an embarrassingly oversized "tru-u-oo-u-uck" used only for grocery hauling, or a paid fossil-fuel industry shill?

Re:Any opinions on thorium?

[olau]

Not an expert, but as far as I understand, the problem with the molten-salt reactors is in the name: you have really hot, radioactive molten salt you need to deal with, and that's just a hard problem in many aspects.

Many of the presentations seem to come from people interested in the physics, and for that kind of people, it's just a set of engineering problems.

But the thing is that you don't just need to solve them, you also need to do that in a manner that is competitive with traditional nuclear plants and renewables like solar and wind. And renewables are getting cheaper every year.

So it's a really, really tough problem. Don't trust the hype.