Once again, the public has shown it simply does not buy the alarmist environmental rhetoric about purportedly disastrous, manmade “global warming.”
The Pew Research Center has released results of a survey suggesting the public has little interest in economy-busting schemes to rein in the “greenhouse gases” that environmentalists blame for climate change.
Respondents were given a list of 21 issues and were asked to rank them according to importance. As with similar surveys in the past, respondents ranked global warming dead last. Everything from jobs to terrorism to trade policy ranked higher on the list of priorities.
While Democrats were more concerned about global warming than Republicans were, only 43 percent of Democrats considered it a top priority. The figure was 25 percent among independents and 11 percent among Republicans. In other words, there is majority, bipartisan agreement that there are far more important economic and national security issues that the American people want Washington to address.
Yet Washington does not appear to be listening. Each day seems to bring news of some additional taxpayer-funded subsidy for costly, impractical “alternative” energy — since those types of energy struggle to gain a foothold when they have to compete without subsidies.
This is a case in which the leaders should be following the people, rather than the other way around.