According to the Fall 2015 UT Energy Poll, as of September 2015 76 percent of the population believes that global climate change is occurring. This percentage marks an all-time statistical high for the survey, having increased 3 percent since September 2012.
The increase in public acceptance of climate change should spark policies that aim to address the issue, but I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio have all either denied the existence of global climate change as a result of human intervention or attempted to mislead the public on the potentially devastating effects it will have.
While better than the responses of his peers, Jeb Bush’s statements on climate change have also been worrisome. Even though Jeb actually agrees with the idea that humans have contributed to climate change he promotes a policy of limiting federal involvement in the energy sector, which while unsurprising given the fact that he’s a Republican, should alarm people who realize that climate change is an issue that needs to be solved as quickly as possible.
Given the fact that the majority of the country believes that climate change is occurring, why hasn’t there been more public outcry regarding Republicans unwillingness to meaningfully address the issue?
Provided the survey is an accurate portrayal of the public at large, Republican candidates face two main issues with trying to address climate change. The first is that their base contains people who are staunchly anti-science and who, while likely a minority, have more than enough power within the party to sway the results of an election. The second is that conservatives don’t want to alienate wealthy donors who may have a vested interest in ensuring that legislation designed to protect the environment doesn’t interfere with their business.
Thankfully, it’s not all doom and gloom. The fact is, as more people start to put their support behind solving an issue, that issue will be solved. Just look at what’s happened with the public support of gay marriage in recent years. In under a decade we went from our president having to hide his support for gay marriage in order to avoid alienating voters, to gay marriage being legal across the entirety of the country.
We’re not out of the woods yet guys, but there’s hope. We have made progress, and if the UT Energy Poll is anything to go by we can continue making progress.
Featured image by Takver via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
