Harris Poll: US Residents Support Environmental Regulation
by Kyeann Sayer, Nomad on 10.17.05
A Harris Poll conducted in August and released last week shows that U.S. residents hold significantly more pro-environmental views than they did in 2000. Nearly seventy-five percent of adults agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost." Good news!
Though 58 percent say they are sympathetic to environmental issues, only 12 percent call themselves active environmentalists. 42 percent believe environmental groups are doing more than their share to help reduce environmental problems, while 71 percent believe large corporations are doing less than their share. Water and air pollution cause the most concern, followed by global warming, ozone depeltion, depletion of forest lands, the need to recycle more materials, and the importance of other nations adhering to U.S. environmental standards.
Since the poll was taken before hurricanes Katrina and Rita, it's likely that affinity for enviromental concerns is even stronger now. Leaders have so many ways to argue for a reversal of the Bush Administration's zeal to slacken standards with renewed awareness of links between environmental degredation and health, national security, and poverty. With luck, this opportunity will not go to waste. :: Harris Poll # 77
"protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost."
That's utter madness. When you say things like that to the government, Bad Things Ensue. Look at the War on Drugs and the War on Terror for examples. The War for the Environment would be every bit as awful.
Is protecting the environment important? Yes. Do we need to do a better job? Absolutely. Do we need better public policies to accomplish this aim? Without a doubt.
"At any cost"? Madness.
"and the importance of other nations adhering to U.S. environmental standards."
I think other nations would be better role models than the US for standards to adhere to.
The survey is largely meaningless because push has not come to shove. How many of these 75% will start screaming if there were, say, a $2/gallon carbon tax imposed on gasoline to bring pump prices up to around $5/gallon? Abstract "costs" are meaningless in this context: you have to see what people say and do when confronted by real costs.
If the real costs are presented as a way to keep yourself, your children, and your grandchildren healthy, then they will be easier to swallow. If the real costs are presented as steppingstones to an attractive and plausible restorative near future, then people will be more inclined to pay them.
The problem is less the costs and more the lack of vision. Where is the coherent and inspiring vision of a sustainable and restorative ecolological future? If we don't have a vision people can buy into, they ain't gonna do anything but more of the same.
It's more than vision: "the environment" is the mother of all free rider problems. We can't get there on sentiment.
Also, the notion that people are willing to protect the environment "at any cost" by debunked with every chemical lawn treatment and dry-cleaning run made by that 75%. The way to move environmental policy forward is to make it easier for politicians to vote for these things. You make it easier by reducing the cost or increasing the convenience of the change.
Another factor this study does not take into account is the average American's general lack of understanding of environmental impacts around the globe. In the next 20 years, the country shaping up to be the run-away polluter is China. A major coal burner (#1 globally at 1.3B tons/year -- 30% of total world consumption!), the country is now the globe's second largest and fastest growing consumer of oil, with annual growth rates averaging 9% year since 2001 (vs. US at 0.9%). In this context, does "at all costs" include war with China to get them to give up industrialization?