POLITICS - Of Climate Change, Poll 12/15/2009

"Poll: Climate Change Action will Boost, Not Hurt US Economy" by Alec Rivera, Lipman Times

The Associated Press reports that, according to a recent AP-Stanford University poll, 40% of Americans believe that climate change action will create jobs and 46% believe that action will boost the economy. The poll shows that, despite Republican attempts to label the Congressional climate change proposal as a “job killer”, Americans still trust President Obama’s economic argument more.

The same poll found that less than one third of Americans believed that the proposal would hurt the economy. Republicans hope to take the message of such proposals hurting gains in the job market to the final days of the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change, where representatives from all over the world are scrambling to orchestrate a global plan to combat global climate change.

“They’re wrong,” Ron Classen of Seattle, who participated in the poll, said of the GOP stance. “People are going to be shifted from one job to another,” said Classen, a self-described fan of environmentalist and former Vice President Al Gore.

The survey’s results seem to boost Democratic efforts to curb global warming pollution and sign on to an international agreement to reduce heat-trapping gases, despite the concerns many Americans have about the recession and the high unemployment rate.

For some, the recession has manifested itself in a nothing-left-to-lose attitude when it comes to tackling climate and to sparking a revolution in where and how the nation produces its energy.

“I don’t know if anybody has looked around lately, but the economy is dead,” said Jake Berglund, a home-improvement contractor from Portland, Conn. “We are in a sinking ship, and Obama has bought us enough life rafts to keep on going. But we need to figure out how to build a new boat when we are still on the water.”

Americans do have a limit to how much they’re willing to pay, in terms of their energy bills, for a Democratic proposal on climate change with a cap-and-trade emissions system for big businesses. Over 75% wouldn’t support any measure that increased their energy costs by $25 per month, and 59% wouldn’t support a measure that increased energy costs by over $10 per month.