If a recent Public Policy Polling survey is any indication, the climate-change deniers you're hearing are basically shouting at each other in an echo chamber and are nowhere near as prevalent as you might fear.
The poll asked voters in eight swing states, including Florida, what they thought about the president's recently released Clean Power Plan. The plan would require power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, thereby reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to 22 percent below what it was in 2005 by 2030.
The survey suggested the vast majority of swing state voters like the plan.
“Sixty-three percent of voters support it," said Tom Jensen, director of PPP. "Across those eight swing states. Only 35 percent oppose it."
What's really notable, he said, was that while a majority of Republicans might not support it, some 44 percent do, which is kind of a lot when you think about it.
“It's been pretty hard over the last six-and-a-half years now to find anything that the president's pushing forward that 44 percent of Republicans support," Jensen said. "That really just goes to show just what a common sense thing this is.”
As for other parties, 81 percent of Democrats favored it and 58 percent of Independents said yes.
The survey also asked whether support of the CPP would make voters view a candidate more or less favorably. About 44 percent said they'd view someone more favorably for supporting the plan versus 30 percent who said the opposite.
In Florida, the outcome of the survey was remarkable in that slightly more Republicans (50 percent) said they like the plan, and 49 said they did not. Some 85 percent of Democrats, of course, supported it, as did 60 percent of Independents in the state.
Jensen said GOP candidates ought to take heed of Florida voters.
“There is no state more so than Florida where if Republicans can't win Florida they can't win a presidential election. And what we found there was that voters were even more overwhelmingly in support of this [plan].”
But even if an overwhelming number of Florida voters do base their votes on how candidates view climate, it's probably unlikely GOP candidates will take heed, especially during primary season.
As with any plan the president proposes, GOP candidates have been vehement in their opposition, claiming that the CPP's economic impacts will be dire despite supporters' statements that it'll create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Candidates called the plan everything from "unconstitutional" to "flatly unconstitutional."
Brad Woodhouse, president of the PAC Americans United for change, said the candidates' complaints are dishonest, and that the plan will likely add jobs to the economy and lower power bills despite higher electric rates, given that renewable power and efficiency measures will likely offset the higher cost. But the plan's scope goes beyond jobs.
“The jury is in on the consequences of climate change," he said. "2014 was the hottest year on record. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. It's happening right before our eyes, whether it's rising sea levels or out-of-control forest fires…longer periods of drought.”
He hinted at an upcoming report on GOP governors from a handful of states (including Florida) that are "investigating" the plan, including one Oklahoma official who, he said, copied and pasted talking points from an oil industry lobbyist onto the official state letterhead.
Laughable stuff, yes, but frightening when one thinks of the implications of continuing to ignore something 97 percent of the scientific community says is definitely occurring.
“What will it take to convince the grand oil party to act?" Woodhouse said. "A climate event straight out of the book of Genesis? Another Noah's Ark? It's literally stunning, the head in the sand nature of Republicans, including Republicans in the field running for president.”
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2015.