On Thursday, I felt the need to rant about the apparent lack of urgency in Congress regarding energy conservation.

According to the New York Times:

Although Democratic leaders proclaimed energy a top legislative priority last January, the issue competes with Iraq, appropriations, financial market turmoil and product safety for room on Congress’s fall calendar.

For as frustrating as this lack of focus on promoting energy efficiency is, it seems that we the people are as much to blame as our elected officials.

A recent survey by the research and strategy firm American Environics for the Nathan Cummings Foundation, titled Energy Attitudes (download PDF here), found that there are six issues, including gay marriage, abortion and taxes, that are more important to voters than environmental issues.

Matthew Yglesias, who blogs for The Atlantic.com provides an interesting analysis of American Environics' research and concludes:

basically, people have the right views on environmental issues, but they don't really care…

Even people who rate themselves 8s, 9s, or 10s on a scale of "are you an environmentalist" have these other issues that rate higher as redlines. The upshot of this and other data, according to the report, is that while there's public eagerness to do something about global warming, it's very tenuous, and people are rabidly opposed to anything that would increase energy costs.

Conclusions drawn directly from the survey include:

1. The dramatic increase in media coverage of global warming in 2006 and 2007 has not made global warming a high priority for voters.
2. Coupling global warming with energy independence, higher gas prices and national security increases the issue's saliency.
3. Concerns over higher energy costs could undercut action on energy or global warming.
4. Large public investment in clean energy is more popular than new regulations.

It's no wonder our self-interested and heavily lobbied elected officials have a hard time passing meaningful legislation when the majority of the people really don't seem to care, and certainly don't seem to want to be "told" what to do about global warming.

Carbon Neutral Journal's stats are brought to you by Blue Spruce Cleaners.

Popularity: 10%