by Mat McDermott,


There’s been another Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes towards various energy sources, environmental regulation, and government action on climate change—as well as how attitudes differ between self-identified Republicans and Democrats.

The results are roughly in line with what polls have been saying for the past several years: When it comes to supporting renewable energy and taking action on climate, a simple majority on both ends of the political spectrum think both these things are a good idea. While Democrats support these with a large majority, Republicans are pretty much split down the middle.

The chart below breaks it down:

But as Gallup characterizes it, “Americans generally appear to ‘want it all.'”

A majority of national adults also support opening up federal land to oil exploration (with Republicans showing a strong majority and Democrats more or less evenly split on the issue). On expanding nuclear power Americans are basically split down the middle, with Republicans being slightly more bullish on nuclear than Democrats, but neither showing strong support.

As Gallup brings up in their analysis of the results, this ‘want it all’ attitude certainly is in line with President Obama’s statements about having an “all of the above” energy strategy—however much I still think that say yes to everything, when some of what’s being said yes to is so polluting, it’s really a strategy at all from an environmental perspective.

However, the poll results aren’t in line with the utter absence, since 2009 at least, of any climate policy from the Obama administration. The very word climate has pretty much evaporated, even though there is bipartisan support for climate action among the American people, if not American politicians.

(Source: www.treehugger.com )