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GLOBAL WARMING OPINION
POLLS: AMERICANS ARE CLEAR—
NO ENERGY TAXES
SPPI ORIGINAL PAPER
♦
August 28, 2012
GLOBAL WARMING OPINION POLLS:
AMERICANS ARE CLEAR — NO ENERGY TAXES
The public opinion of Americans, as captured by various polling organizations over the past few
years, can generally and concisely be summed up as:
 The earth is warming
 Human activities probably have something to do with this
(although the impacts are being exaggerated)
 We have many more important concerns (jobs, economy, etc.) that we think Congress
and the President ought to focus on, and
 Any action that is aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions should not cost us
much, if anything at all
(and direct taxes on gasoline or electricity are out).
The actual degree of public opinion of these points fluctuates a bit over time, based upon nearterm weather events, how much climate change, including climate change scandals (such as the
contents of the Climategate 1 and Climategate 2 email troves), is in the news, and other
external issues such as the economy.
But the general feeling has been pretty
How long the American public will
much been in place for probably a
stand for politicians allowing the EPA
decade or more and has resulted in no
real legislation despite on-again-offto essentially make laws is unclear.
again efforts in Congress to pass some
sort of law to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from the U.S.—an indication that Americans really do not support such actions.
Further evidence of this comes from the 2010 election results in which Democrats in the House
of Representatives paid a price for their June, 2009 passage of the cap-and-trade bill that was
aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Every close race that they lost in those
elections evicted a member who had voted for the cap-and-trade program. In the Senate,
(which never voted on the cap-and-trade legislation) every close race went to an incumbent
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Democrat. Clearly, American’s did not look with favor upon their Representatives which
supported higher energy taxes.
For probably all of the reasons above, and despite President Obama’s comments in Rolling
Stone magazine last April that “I suspect that over the next six months, this (climate change) is
going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing
my belief that we're going to have to
take further steps to deal with climate
change in a serious way” climate
Candidate Mitt Romney has indicated
change has not received much
his effort to amend the Clean Air Act to
attention in this year’s campaign—and
probably will not do so during the
effectively repeal the court ruling that
remainder of the election season.
allows the law to be used to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions.
But while the politicians do not want to
explicitly address the issue through
legislation, they nevertheless do so
implicitly by allowing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to continue to establish new
regulations aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions. While some of these regulations have
been struck down in court, others have survived legal challenges and are proceeding. How long
the American public will stand for politicians allowing the EPA to essentially make laws is
unclear, but actions are growing in Congress to try to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate
greenhouse gases. While several proposed actions have been unsuccessful to date, others are
still in the works. Republican presidential
candidate Mitt Romney has indicated his
The largest group thinks that the
effort to amend the Clean Air Act to
effectively repeal the court ruling that allows
seriousness of global warming is
the law to be used to regulate greenhouse
being exaggerated in the media.
gas emissions.
So while some opinion polls—such as one
from March 2012 conducted jointly by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities
(http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Policy-Support-March-2012.pdf)—when taken on
their own, can seem to indicate widespread support for energy regulations, the broader set of
opinion polls tells a different story. Below are some highlights from a collection of recent polls
taken by a breadth of organizations aimed at ascertaining American’s viewpoints of the many
aspects of global warming and climate change—and how these opinions may have changed
over time.
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A March 2012 Gallup poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/global-warming-views-steadydespite-warm-winter.aspx) indicates that while a slight majority of Americans think that global
warming is currently underway, and a slight majority think that human activities are primarily to
blame, the largest group thinks that the seriousness of global warming is being exaggerated in
the media.
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According to a November 2011 opinion poll by the Pew Research Center (http://www.peoplepress.org/2011/12/01/modest-rise-in-number-saying-there-is-solid-evidence-of-globalwarming/1/) investigating a similar topic, the percentage of Americans that think that there is
solid evidence that the earth is warming is 63% (down from 77% in 2007) with about 38%
(down from 47% in 2007) that think that the warming is because of human activity. About 65%
of the people polled thought that global warming was either a “somewhat” or “very serious”
problem (down from 79% having that opinion in 2007), while 33% thought that global warming
was either “not too serious” or “not a problem” (up from 20% in 2007).
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But, in spite of these opinions, “global
warming” has consistently ranked at or
“Global warming” has consistently
near the bottom of a long list of concerns
ranked at or near the bottom of a long
or “priorities” that the American public
would prefer that the president and
list of concerns or “priorities” that the
Congress focus on. A January 2012 poll
American public would prefer that the
conducted by the Pew Research Center
ranked the percentage of respondents
president and Congress focus on.
that considered 22 particular topics to be
a “top priority” for Congress. Global
warming came in dead last with only 25% of those polled considering it a top priority—down
13% over the past 5 years. While only one-quarter of the people ranked global warming as a
top priority, 86% considered “economy” and 82% considered “jobs” to be top priorities.
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Further support that Americans do not want a great deal of attention focused on global
warming policies comes from a poll conducted by Stanford University
(http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/ surveys/GW-Policy-Trend-2010-2012-1.pdf) in April 2012. In
that poll found a drop in the percentage of
people over the past two years that
endorsed policies intended to reduce future
The poll found that an overwhelming
global warming. The poll found that an
number of respondents were
overwhelming number of respondents were
opposed to increasing taxes on gasoline or
opposed to increasing taxes on
electricity to try to reduce greenhouse gas
gasoline or electricity to try to reduce
emissions, although a majority favored “tax
breaks” to industries trying to develop new
greenhouse gas emissions.
methods for reducing greenhouse gas
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emissions (e.g., improving automobile gas mileage, improving appliance efficiency, producing
electricity from renewables). Over the past two years, support has eroded for “tax breaks” and
opposition to higher gasoline and electricity taxes has increased.
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Together the results from these recent polls indicate a very tepid, half-hearted support for
actions aimed at lowering greenhouse gas emissions, preferring a nebulous “tax break” to
companies developing new technologies, but strongly opposing direct taxes (which are more
easily understood as making things cost more) on individual energy usage.
With these results in mind, the cap-andtrade proposal are being replaced with
The cap-and-trade proposal are being
purportedly revenue neutral proposals in
replaced with purportedly revenue
which taxes on carbon are “offset” by
reductions in income taxes or other tax
neutral proposals in which taxes on
rebates. The idea is that the total
carbon are “offset” by reductions in
amount of carbon tax collected each year
would be returned to Americans on an
income taxes or other tax rebates.
equal share per capita basis, while the
amount of individual taxes paid would be
directly tied to how much carbon was individually used. If you cut back enough the amount of
refund you would receive would exceed the amount of taxes you paid—further encouraging
continued demand for efficiency and driving down emissions. However, critics of such a
program point out that once the government collects the taxes, there will be a growing
tendency for it to want to keep the taxes—with the net result of rising energy costs and the
declines in productivity, etc. that would accompany them. Not to mention a lot of other details
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which would require being worked out and sold to the American public—a public which, as the
poll results clearly indicate, has much more urgent matters on their minds that they want the
Congress and the president to attend to. In these hard economic times, it seems that most
Americans would take a dim view of Congress or the president spending too much effort in
focusing on global warming and some new tax and rebate plan, when their minds are on jobs,
debt and entitlements. Given that it is widely known (even by government officials) that
domestic greenhouse gas emissions reductions produce no detectable impacts on local,
regional, or global climate, any money at all spent pursuing such reductions is money taken
away from more pressing issues.
As a consequence—barring some sort of catastrophic weather event (even though such events
cannot be scientifically linked to anthropogenic climate change)—global warming will almost
surely not be raised as a major issue in the 2012 presidential and congressional campaigns.
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Cover art provided by Microsoft.
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