Here in Canada, where only a year ago the environment was a blip on the radar screens of pollsters, the issue has suddenly emerged as the most important one facing the country, according to polling conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV.
As first reported Friday, the environment was cited as the top issue by 26 per cent of respondents in polling conducted in mid-January, supplanting the perennial favourite, health care, now the No. 2 issue, at 18 per cent. The shift amounts to the equivalent of a public-opinion earthquake — last May the environment was on the minds of a mere 3 per cent of Canadians.
What is more, Canadians feel so passionately about the topic that they say they don't want half-measures. The Globe's polling has found support for an array of tough actions against global warming: 56 per cent even say they would support rationing the amount of fossil fuels an individual can use each year...
But the effect is also being felt on the street. When Canadians look out the window these days, they say they're seeing global warming. An overwhelming 78 per cent of respondents to the Globe poll, nearly four out of five people, say they've personally noticed climate change. The same number fear it is going to harm future generations. And nearly as many — 73 per cent — say the warming is due to human activity and isn't a natural phenomenon.
More than half of respondents told the pollsters that Canadians would support banning electrical-generation plants that use coal, placing carbon taxes on industries, rationing or setting limits on the amount of fossil fuels consumers can use in any one year, and forcing consumers to switch to fuels that produce lower carbon emissions. Nearly half want to slow down or reduce the development of tar sands in Alberta. About one in three wants significantly higher prices for gasoline and home-heating fuel.
The views are backed by personal commitments. More than nine out of every 10 people say they're willing to make sacrifices, with 55 per cent saying they'd accept major ones and 38 per cent minor ones in the fight against global warming. Only 5 per cent say they won't do anything.
Clear majorities also say they would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half, and have the economy grow at “a significantly slower rate” to help clean up the environment.
Then there are the cases where, having thrown away the guidance of tradition, we figure we might as well toss out common sense too.
More: Who's still cool on global warming? (Toronto Star, January 28th, 2007)
6 comments:
We puny humans can't cause global warming nor can we stop it. The earth has been heating up and cooling down in cycles long before computer models and will continue to do so whether or not moonbats jump up and down and make themselves dizzy for billions of years to come.
This issue is but another in the left's grab bag of tricks designed to cripple the blossoming of free trade, capitalism and the bright rosy economic picture that is the Anglosphere.
Clear majorities also say they would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half...
Then why don't they do it ?
Nobody's stopping them, and none of those things require any kind of support from government or other social organizations.
It's just another case of people showing their best face to pollsters, while doing the opposite in practice.
I'm noticing a theme to today's posts, this whole "disregarding of traditional wisdom" trope. What is the traditional wisdom with regard to climate change? Should we start saying the Lord's Prayer in earnest?
Here's the funniest part of the whole piece:
The views are backed by personal commitments. More than nine out of every 10 people say they're willing to make sacrifices, with 55 per cent saying they'd accept major ones and 38 per cent minor ones in the fight against global warming. Only 5 per cent say they won't do anything.
Clear majorities also say they would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half, and have the economy grow at “a significantly slower rate” to help clean up the environment.
Personal commitment = telling a pollster you'd pay more for theoretical product.
So, although the two specific skeptics' organizations the reporter mentions in the first half of the story operate on peanuts, by the end of the story, a richly funded conspiracy ($43 million, about 3 orders of magnitude less than is spent on climate research) is muddying the clear vision of the warmers.
These people remind me of Beauregard Bear in Pogo. He could write but he couldn't read.
David said what I was going to say.
Back when Scientific American was a respectable publication (boy am I ever dating myself), the published an article investigating how much respondents assertions they would pay some additional amount to support a favored initiative were worth.
I can't remember the how they made assertions concrete, but the answer to how much the assertions were actually worth was indistinguishable from zero.
As for the article Peter linked to, it has been a long time since I have read such a shameless mixture of ad hominem attack and propaganda.
You'd think that in a longish piece there would be some cataloging of the skeptics claims. Instead, there is scarcely a word, and what there is is so superficial as to raises skepticism on its own.
Here is a list of moderately technical, and (to my eye, anyway) balanced articles discussing global warming.
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