71% of Voters, Small Businesses Support Mandatory Carbon Pollution Cuts (Even 49% of Fox News Viewers Do!)

Here’s a great post from our friends over at Climate Progress on a new poll showing, yet again, that the people support carbon pollution cuts, even mandatory cuts. Small businesses support such cuts, and even 49% of Fox viewers support such cuts!

by Joe Romm

This week, the League of Conservation Voters released polling by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies demonstrating very strong support for EPA efforts to reduce global warming pollution.  They found:

Fully 71 percent indicate support for requiring reductions in carbon emissions, including a solid majority of Republican voters….

Despite the rhetoric coming from most of the Republican presidential candidates, this poll demonstrates what previous research has consistently shown: Americans across the country – including Republican voters – trust the EPA to limit global warming pollution,” said LCV Senior Vice President of Campaigns Navin Nayak.

These results are consistent with over a dozen polls taken in the last 2 years (see Poll (6/11): Independents — and Even Republicans — are Still Concerned About Global Warming and Overwhelmingly Support Clean Energy Development and links below).  Here’s more detail:

Support for “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requiring reductions in carbon emissions from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming pollution” is wide-spread and broad-based.  Majorities of a wide range of key voter sub-groups support this, including:

• Among Republicans (55 percent support), Independents (72 percent support), and Democrats (89 percent support); and
• Among viewers of CNN (87 percent support), MSNBC (86 percent support), ABC/CBS/NBC (81 percent support), and Fox News (49 percent support).

Here’s the chart on different levels of support for EPA global warming pollution standards for viewers of different networks:

As to the question of whether Fox News influences their viewers’ views or whether people with those (conservative) views simply choose to watch Fox, the answer from the social science literature is “both” as I discussed in my debunking of Matt Nisbet’s misanalysis.

Jon Krosnick of Stanford analyzes this in “Frequent Viewers of Fox News Are Less Likely to Accept Scientists’ Views of Global Warming.”  Krosnick notes that his “Figure 1 shows how more exposure to Fox News was associated with less endorsement of the views of mainstream scientists about global warming,” and says while he can’t know for sure whether people were persuaded by Fox or selectively chose Fox:

We therefore suspect that the relations documented in Figure 1 are likely to result from a combination of persuasion by Fox News coverage and of selective exposure by Republicans and conservative viewers to Fox News.

Another study  “Climate on Cable: The Effects of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC on Global Warming Beliefs and Perceptions,” led by Feldman found that “the views of Republicans on climate change may be less solidified than Democrats, thereby making them more easily influenced by the content of cable news,” specifically Fox News.  Feldman’s study itself explicitly says its findings are “suggestive of direct persuasion, whereby the views of conservative-Republicans are reflective of the cable news outlet they watch.”

So two key papers find that the viewers of Fox News’ biased climate coverage are less likely to accept scientists’ views of global warming — and that direct persuasion appears to have played a role in shifting their views (see also “Foxgate: Leaked email reveals Fox News boss Bill Sammon ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science”).

As for the polling on the views of small business owners, E&E News (subs. req’d) reports:

Earlier this week, the organization Small Business Majority released the results of a similar poll among its members: Despite an uncertain economy, 76 percent of small business owners support EPA in its efforts to track and eventually curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

The small business survey concluded that most of the 1,257 small business owners who were polled believe that rising costs, not regulations, are making it harder to make ends meet. The poll was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

“Small businesses understand that to survive in this tough economy they need to innovate, and that strong energy efficiency standards will assist them in doing so by helping them save money in their own business and creating new market opportunities,” said John Arensmeyer, CEO of Small Business Majority, in a statement. “Right now, helping small businesses grow and put Americans back to work should be the number one priority.”

… Edward Maibach, the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University … released a similar poll, with the question “How much do you support or oppose regulating carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas) as a pollutant?” The segment in support — 77 percent — was almost identical to that in the Small Business Majority study.

Small Business Majority, a California-based advocacy group, released a similar report a year ago, in conjunction with the Main Street Alliance. The report’s authors found that the economic benefits reaped from the Clean Air Act were four to eight times greater than costs to comply

The public has consistently supported the need for controlling global warming pollution for years.  Sadly, the White House remains clueless on this (see Polling Expert: Is Obama’s Reluctance to Mention Climate Change Motivated by a False Assumption About Public Opinion?)

Related Polls:

• Mark Mellman must read on climate messaging: “A strong public consensus has emerged on the reality and severity of global warming, as well as on the need for federal action”(5/09)
• Public support for action on global warming has grown since January (6/09)
• New CNN poll finds “nearly six in 10 independents” support cap-and-trade (10/09)
• Voters in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri overwhelmingly support action on clean energy and global warming (11/09)
• Overwhelming US Public Support for Global Warming Action (12/09)
• Public Opinion Stunner: WashPost-ABC Poll Finds Strong Support for Global Warming Reductions Despite Relentless Big Oil and Anti-Science Attacks (12/09)
• Yale:  When asked whether they “support or oppose regulation carbon dioxide” as a pollutant, 73 percent said yes, with only 27 percent opposed, including 61 percent of Republicans (2/10)
• Washington Post Labels Global Warming a ‘Wedge Issue’ — But Doesn’t Seem to Know What That Term Means *8/11) –   Stanford professor Jon Krosnick, which found:

“Political candidates get more votes by taking a “green” position on climate change – acknowledging that global warming is occurring, recognizing that human activities are at least partially to blame and advocating the need for action – according to a June 2011 study by researchers at Stanford University.”